Quilt of Beads to support breast cancer research

To bead or not to bead?

The answer is obvious to some Arizona Western College students and other beading enthusiasts. They recently completed 44 small quilt blocks of tiny beads for a national project that supports breast cancer research.

Judy Cowdrick said the quilt blocks will be submitted to the 2010 Bead-It-Forward breast cancer donation project. Each square depicts this year’s project theme of turtles in various forms.

“Turtles stand for Mother Earth and keeper of all living things,” explained Cowdrick, herself a breast cancer survivor.  “As women, we could use some help."

Cowdrick teaches the beginning bead weaving course at the AWC Entrepreneurial Center.

At the Bead-It-Forward headquarters in Alaska the organization’s founder, Jeanette Shanigan, will stitch together each inch and a half square beaded quilt block into a small quilt, adding a row of beads to cover the stitched areas and borders, Cowdrick explained. The quilts will then be encased in handmade frames or shadow boxes, which will be covered with glass. They will then be auctioned off by Bead Artists against Breast Cancer at the Bead and Button Show in Wisconsin.

Pictures of the finished quilts along with turtle blocks already submitted for this year’s donation project can be seen on the Internet at ShanigansBeadShenanigans.com.

Cowdrick’s beading instruction reaches well beyond the AWC’s classrooms, however. When she is not in Yuma, she and her husband travel to various parts of the country, where she shares her craft.

“I teach Yavapai and Navajo in northern Arizona because their art is dying, especially among their young people,” Cowdrick said. She teaches in other states, too, often in RV parks where she and her husband stay during their travels.

Participation in beading projects for charity is not limited to students in Cowdrick’s classes, where her oldest student learned how to bead at 84. For the breast cancer research project at the national level, Cowdrick said that children as young as 7 have participated in past projects.

“The students share and there is a lot of interaction among classmates,” Cowdrick says of her classes, where students and instructors meet once a week for three hours over ten weeks. Some of them even come as much as two hours ahead of schedule to her classes, she said.

Shirley Gehring, one of the class participants, learned in mid-January that she is the bronze medal winner in the Fire Mountain Gems and Beads 2009 CRYSTALLIZED™ - Swarovski Elements Jewelry-Making Contest. Her winning entry, a bracelet called “Cascade Falls,” can be seen on the Fire Mountain Bead catalog’s Web site in their gallery of designs.

“It was the second bracelet of my own design I had ever done,” said Gehring. “I had sold the first one.”

As a former teacher herself, Gehring describes Cowdrick as “a well-prepared teacher who comes up with good, new ideas.”

“The classes have a lot of camaraderie,” said Layl Laird.

A former bead store owner, Laird has voluntarily assisted in the bead classes for the past five years. Because she is left-handed, she is especially helpful to other lefties in interpreting beading procedures.

“We start out as strangers, but end up as friends,” Laird said. She describes beading as “a nice hobby, compact enough to carry along with you.”

One class participant, Carol Schafer, said Cowdrick “helped me find out the world was right again after I lost my husband. She taught me how to bead and I love it.”

Cowdrick’s course encompasses other areas of jewelry making besides beading. Students learn how to weave wire into a fine mesh to use as portions of necklaces or other jewelry to which they will add beads, making their work look more professional.

Not a bead goes to waste once all projects are completed. Extra beads are donated to Beads of Courage, a national charity organization based in Tucson that awards special beads or bead projects to children coping with cancer or other life-threatening illnesses.

“The bead class was built from nothing,” said Cowdrick. “There were only two people present of the three enrolled,” she said, describing her first class. "But through advertising and RV parks, flea markets and craft stores, we are now overbooked and had to add classes for 2011."

Now there is a waiting list.

The classes began, Cowdrick said, as a result of the insight and wisdom of her former teacher, Dessa de Anda, who teaches the advanced beading courses at AWC. De Anda, recognizing the need for a stronger background in basic beading and terminology, inspired Cowdrick to get the course started.

"It’s cheaper than therapy,” quipped Nancy Streeter, another class participant. However, the quilts are not cheap at auction time.    

Bead and Button magazine’s December 2007 issue reported that when the first beaded quilt was auctioned off on the Internet in 2005, it fetched $500 through Bead Artists against Breast Cancer.  By contrast, quilts auctioned in the Bead and Button Show in June 2009 raised more than $14,000 for the Medical College of Wisconsin Cancer, as reported at www.firemountaingems.com/specials.

Daniel Barajas, AWC associate dean for community and educational partnerships, called Cowdrick "a real fireball.” Barajas also described Cowdrick as “a great ambassador” who participates “in these incredibly worthwhile events.”

“All we do is to facilitate the environment,” said Barajas, giving credit to "the hearts of the students that do such good work.”