Embroidered Collage

In the theme of continuing with variation, I used a pile of beads from my stash instead of buying new ones.  I attached one to each square using some variety of two crossing stitches, sometimes deliberately bending the line of the thread to the side on the other end of the bead.  They still needed something, so I went for that accent of a dark value and made small patterns of straight stitch  with a black metallic thread.  I used three or four different family concepts of how the straight stitches interacted with each other.  By family concept I mean how many stitches there were and whether they crossed and so forth. 

These are definitely going to be stitched onto my next layering after the autumn piece.  I keep pulling the 25 pieces out and arranging and rearranging them, trying to decide what kind of effect I'm after.  I know I don't want an evenly irregular look, like in this overall picture, but that's about the only firm decision I've made.