Last week I finished a bee for the cover of my book. It’s meant to be a bee-hive scissor fob and needle keep. I spotted it at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate in the autumn. It was actually the promotion postcards that first drew my attention as they had embroidered bees on!

They are designed by Blue Coppice and her designs were so pretty. Having asked if I could possibly have two of her postcards I did want to support her by buying one of her patterns. My thought is that the bee-hive will go on the spine of the book with the Queen Bee needle keep slipping inside it as a bookmark.

The bee and the hive were pretty straight forward to make though the hive took quite a while. It’s padded satin stitch so there are a total of three layers of thread and the top layer is then couched down with three different shades to give the curved effect. Obviously if I wanted to make a scissor fob then I would have to make another hive for the back. It’s backed with a co-ordinating batik and I slipped some felt inside as padding. I just back-stitched round the hive front and backing and then turned which was a little fiddly. I could then just slip-stitch the bottom.

The queen bee is embroidered on black felt. She has a little crown of gold thread and a red bead. I put a little felt inside again before over-stitching the front and back together. You can just see a needle sticking out of her bottom, her sting!

I love my little Queen Bee and her hive, my stitching might be a bit higgledy-piggledy with the couching but I think that somehow makes it look a little more rustic like a traditional woven bee skep.

If you fancy embroidering a bee or two, there’s several lovely designs over on the Blue Coppice website.