Apologies for not posting this yesterday, we had a bit of a family crisis last week when someone was blue-lighted into hospital, luckily it’s not as serious as thought at first but several days hospital visiting certainly keeps one busy!

Anyway, up to this last week, I’ve been a busy bee with my book. I decided it was time to start putting pages together, the three bee one was the deciding factor on size as that was the biggest piece, I’m aiming for a finished size of 7.5″. Several embroideries were big enough to just leave as is…

The other ones I had to start being creative. Some worked really well, others were harder and possibly a little ‘boring! This writing page will be opposite the three bees so I decided to keep it simple on some of my favourite bee fabric. I stitched it on with little cross-stitches.

I found some of the simple rectangular cross-stitch designs harder to make interesting. They were rarely big enough to use two, but not quite enough on their own. I’m fairly happy with the beehive one on the left, having pieced it with two coordinating fabrics I added the stitched quote, a length of bee tape and a line of feather stitch down the side. I’m still undecided about the humble honey one as to whether it needs a little something else.

One of my favourite ones is the blackwork bee. I played about with it for a while until suddenly having a bit of inspiration when rummaging through my lace box. I had an old lace doily which I’d picked up for about 50p in a vintage shop in Otley. The bee fit in it perfectly. I very carefully cut the lace off the linen and laid it over the linen, stitched round and then trimmed the linen at the back. I laid the piece over the honey coloured fabric which nicely brings it all together.

The Dumbledore one is another that took a while to get an idea. I’d made the four patch block but just adding the two cross-stitch looked very boring. I played with a few ideas before settling on bee hexagons in a wiggle across the page….and who knew that little fact about Dumbledore!

This lace one was inspired by the success of the blackwork bee. I’m still not sure it’s finished though…the lace was another 50p doilie as it had rips in it. The gold bee at the bottom is from some machine embroidered tulle I’ve had for years. I made the circles by gathering the pieces over a card template and then ironing them. They’re not quite as neat as I would like, I’m wondering about embroidering a circle round each one to cover the edge.

Another pair that were tricky were the two purple ones. The pot of lavender was a mini cushion with the ricrac and the mini pompom trim. I added the three surrounding fabrics and the lavender trim. It still needed a little more so I embroidered little bees on the flowers to the left. I might still add a little line of embroidery along the top.

The bee on the thistle took several tries to get an interesting look. At first I just had the cross-stitch stitched on the background with the words underneath. I then had the idea to off-set it with a length of lace. It still needed something in the bottom corner, so I cut out a coneflower from felt and appliqued it on. I bought the buttons at Yarndale last month, not realising what bulky shafts they had. I decided to try and cut it off, expecting it to shatter, but it was actually softish plastic, cutting off neatly, so I could glue them on, one big one and three little ones.

So good progress with the pages, I’ve started a goldwork bee, thinking that would be the last major one to stitch…then I went to the Knitting and Stitching show yesterday…and I fell for another four!! One of them I was planning to get, the others just sort of said ‘Buy me!!’

This SAL is organised by Avis from Stitching by the Sea, please follow the links to see what everyone else has been stitching.

Avis, Claire, Gun, Christina, Kathy, Margaret, Sunny, Deborah, Sharon, Daisy,Cathie, Linda, MaryMargaret , Cindy, Helen