A few months back I decided to make a fabric book of bees, my plan is to have various small embroideries of bees, interspersed with words about bees, such as poems, facts.

I have a lovely cross-stitch bumble bee which I’ve stitched three times now, and as I gave one to my mum a couple of years before she died, it’s now back in my possession. I’m thinking of changing this one from a pin cushion to an entry in my book.

I’ve quite a few bee themed fabrics to use and over the last few months I’ve been keeping my eye open for bee embroideries. I spotted a pretty kit on Etsy of a bee on clover and ordered it.

It’s not taken me long to stitch it, it was small enough to be a handbag project, though most of it was probably stitched at home during coffee breaks. I was a tad disappointed when the kit arrived as the picture on the front is computer generated, not stitched. This suggests to me that the designer hasn’t actually stitched it. It also means that the effect on the image may not be reproduced with thread.

I used a subtly coloured evenweave linen instead of the white aida provided. I started stitching in the centre as usual, but it was one of those designs with lots of scattered colours which make it difficult to remember where you are. I used my usual tactic in this situation, I made a bee-line ( ‘scuse the pun!)for the edge and then worked my way back inwards.

I like how the designer has used half cross-stitch in different directions on the clover and the bee, my only issue was that only one thread was used which really didn’t show up much. The photo shows the single thread stitches on the bee and the top of the clover as well as the trial of two threads on the leaves…

I decided to use two threads for everything apart from the wings. Once all the cross-stitching was complete I just had to add the back-stitched detail. The pattern uses black for most of it, I decided to use a very dark maroon for the lighter areas of the clover so it wouldn’t be quite so contrasting.

I finished the bee last night, I’m pretty pleased with it and happy with the changes I made. It’s definitely one of those that look better from a distance though! I’ve just got to decide how to make it into a page for my book.