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.
Well I’m afraid I’ve managed very little on my Owl and Hare Hollow quilt over the last three weeks, other projects have been taking up my evening slot when I would usually be quilting.
Three weeks ago I had almost quilted twenty-three blocks, hoping I would cross the half way point for the New Year…
…and I have now quilted the grand total of twenty-four blocks! So I have managed to quilt just over one block and I’ve still not quite reached the over halfway point of twenty-five blocks! In my defence we have had Christmas and New Year in between.
So this is my quilt so far…
As you can see from the hoop creases I’m working on the fifth row from right to left. Somehow I seem to have missed the bottom row completely and some of the next row too so I think before I start on the last two rows I’ll try and quilt those first.
Fingers crossed next time I will have crossed the half way point!
This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another. If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.
I’ve been a busy bee with my book over the last three weeks, I now have the makings of a book! It’s mini happy dance time!
Three weeks ago I was still making the final pages, cutting them to size and embellishing as necessary…
Since then I’ve finished all the pages, added a few more embellishments, organised them into some semblance of order and made them into pages. I’ve stitched the pages together and all I need to do now is make a cover.
I stiffened each page with either pelmet vilene or buckram, The vilene was left over from the garden book, I think I possibly prefer that one but the shop where I bought it from has moved to a little village not accessible by bus. B&M fabrics in Leeds sold the iron-on buckram so I thought I’d give that a try. The buckram is very adhesive on both sides so I just ironed down the edges over to the back initially. The Vilene is just adhesive on one side only so I could Iron it to the page and then iron the edges over. I slip-stitched all round before pressing the buckram side carefully so as not to get any creases forming. Most pages have one side with vilene and one side with buckram so the pages feel a similar weight.
The last couple of books I’ve made have been bound with my adaptation of Coptic stitch. This time I decided to try slip-stitching the pages together, each side was slip-stitched to it’s neighbour. I did pairs first, then put the pairs together and so on. The last one was very fiddly as by that time it was pretty thick and inflexible, making slip-stitch tricky. I tried a curved needle but mine are quite thick, too thick for the dense cotton.
I like the appearance of the slip-stitch from the inside, like you can’t see it, the disadvantage is that the book bows to the middle very slightly as the corners are more bulky. Hopefully this won’t be noticeable once the cover is on.
The hive page on the left is one where I added a little more, with the length of light purple lace and three buttons.
Having organised pages into pairs and then a rough order according to colour, I realised the one page I was having difficulty pairing up was the collage bee, just because it’s so big and bright, somewhat in your face! I made a four patch in yellow bee fabrics, initially intending to do a Raggedy Ruff quilt page. I then had the idea to make a pocket page, I’d been thinking how to do this for a while as I’ve been given or collected a few pictures of bees whilst doing this project, I was going to tuck them into the back cover. I decided however to make a page from some fine fabric which a friend gave me. I wanted to use it as she had gone to the effort of sorting it out and bringing it to the Skipton monthly meeting, the bees were quite ‘cartoonish’ though which made them quite difficult to place in the book. They worked perfectly though opposite the big bee. I just made a diagonal pocket and stitched it over the four patch. The top bee is a spare one which I carefully cut out and I confess I glued it on as whatever colour I tried showed up too much.
Another addition I made was to the goldwork bee, I cut it into a hexagon and mounted it on honeycomb fabric. I then found a gold thread which was thick enough to couch round the hexagon, I’ve had it in my stash for years so it was nice to use it. It looked great opposite the blackwork bee but I didn’t want the goldwork to damage the blackwork or the vintage lace. I used a tulle with gold bees on to make a protective page in between the two.
I’ve already chosen my fabric for the cover, a lovely blue Lewis and Irene fabric with bees on, I’ve just got to work out how I’m going to attach it. I also need some inspiration for the title of my book, otherwise it might just be called ‘Bee’, ideas so far include A Bee Compendium…which is nicely ABC, a Bee in my Bonnet, or something to do with the fact that if you count the ones on fabric too there are over 100 bees in the book!
Hopefully next SAL I’ll have my dancing shoes on 🙂
This SAL is organised by Avis, please follow the links to see what everyone else has been stitching;
Over the last few weeks I’ve managed to stitch the first and last page for my bee book…
At the Harrogate Knitting and Stitching show I made a bee-line (please excuse the pun!!) for a certain stall, in my garden book I stitched a little fabric panel with a lovely painting of a blue tit…
The same artist was there and as I thought, she had one of a bumble bee. I wanted to do the same idea of words on the background, I decided to do all the different jobs a worker bee does over her lifetime, from nurse to undertaker to forager. The background was blue, green and yellow, so I chose a similar DMC thread, so it wouldn’t compete with the bee.
I used a spare bit of green linen for the title and my details…
For the last page I used a poem I found a while back, fitting called ‘The Last Bee’ by Brian Bilston. I think it’s very poignant and also cleverly written with all the letter ‘b’s missing. I kept the page very simple so I didn’t detract from the serious message.
All I have to do now is make all my bees into a book!
As usual I am starting the year with hopes and plans for my sewing and one thing that might help me to succeed is a good tidy up and sort out in my sewing room. It’s time for the annual declutter challenge that Karen Brown from Just Do It Quilts runs every year. This is the third time I’ve done the declutter challenge but it’s first time I’ve been able to actually start the challenge on the 1st January, I’m hoping it will help me complete the full 28 days
Karen splits the declutter into small manageable tasks, so we don’t get overwhelmed and give up half way, so one day might be threads, another day it’s books and so on. Day 1 was garbage! Unfortunately I didn’t take a picture before I removed two bin bags of rubbish! In my defence a fair proportion of it was already in my two bins…but a fair amount wasn’t! Today it was squatters, those things that don’t actually belong in the sewing room.
As part of the process Karen also suggests choosing projects to work on whilst doing the declutter, a sort of reward. I’ve decided to do a small wall hanging for my sewing room, it’s one of Andrea’s quilts from Raggedy Ruff, I’ve done several of hers now, this is yet another kit I fell for just recently. It’s in two monthly instalments and yesterday afternoon I stitched the background for the first half of it…
I love the backgrounds on Andrea’s quilts, such a mix of textures and colours. This design is called ‘Autumn Harvest Mice’, it has two dormice and a robin. It’s only 18″ square so a nice size for a wall hanging in my sewing room.
With a bit of luck I might get the other Raggedy Ruff quilt finished too, it must be two years since I started it! Andrea has 50% off patterns at the moment if you fancy having a go at one of her designs.
Hand quilting is always a good winter project, I can drape the quilt over my knees so it keeps me warm whilst I quilt on an evening! I’m still just making slow but steady progress with this quilt what with Christmas and my bee book vying for attention.
Three weeks ago I’d almost quilted twenty-one blocks…
At the moment I’m quilting the owl block, I’ve quilted round the outer circle and the inner circle, I’ve also stitched a small circle round his face. I’ve still to do the sashing circle and he will eventually have two little buttons for eyes too though I might wait til the very end before I stitch those on.
I’ve now nearly quilted twenty-three blocks out of forty-nine, so I’m almost half way, with a bit of luck I’ll cross the half-way mark for the New Year.
This Hand Quilt Along is an opportunity for hand quilters and piecers to share and motivate one another. We post every three weeks, to show our progress and encourage one another. If you have a hand quilting project and would like to join our group contact Kathy at the link below.
This bee was one I didn’t plan to buy at the Knitting and Stitching Show, it was a pre-printed design by Anne Brooke of Hanne-made. It was little and pretty and I couldn’t resist it!
It was a fairly quick stitch too. I used variegated threads for everything apart from the wings, all DMC apart from the gold for the bumblebee which is a colourworks one left over from the bee sampler.
I stitched the bees body with long and short stitch, at first I did the outline of the wings in a fine chain stitch but it was just too heavy so I unpicked it and just used stem stitch. The green on the allium is all stem stitch too with French knots for the flowers.
If anyone fancies a stitch-a-long I’m joining both of Anne’s SALs, a weekly one and a monthly one. One of them is to stitch on a garment and I can’t remember what the other one is meant to be but I’m going to put them all in a book, or that’s my plan at the moment. Anne’s style is very much slow stitching, she’ll give us a word or an idea and some ideas and we can then run with them however we want, I did her SAL a few years back, 2021 I think, it did help me to be less afraid of raw edges in embroidery!!
I’ve not done as much on my actual book over the last three weeks, mainly due to Christmas preparations but also I’ve been stitching extra bees which I’ve already shared with you. I have however done some extra stitching on three of the pages I’d already put together.
There were three I wasn’t 100% happy with, the two white linen pages and the lavender pot….
With the lavender pot it was just the top purple strip I wasn’t happy with, it just needed a little something, so I just stitched a line of wide feather stitch which I think is enough…
The two white pages took a little longer…
It was the edges of the circles that I wasn’t happy with, they just didn’t look very neat. I decided to stitch a ring round each one using a different stitch. I used a cotton thread which I found in my stash, it was slightly heavier than a single DMC thread and I think it worked very well.
I started with the gold bee and used feather stitch again, just catching in the edge of the voile as I went round and making one side straight with the edge.
The bee surrounded by a wreath is also surrounded by feather stitch but this time I just had the tip of one ‘feather’ on the circle…feather stitch is probably one of my favourite stitches in case you hadn’t realised!!
The white work bee is surrounded by blanket stitch which hasn’t come out as well as I hoped but it’s staying. The last bee is edged with herringbone.
I also cut away the fabric behind the two larger embroideries which has helped reduce bulk so they press better…I’d also managed to stitch a daisy-headed pin inside one of them so I had to snip it out anyway!!
I’m much happier with these two pages now, the extra embroidery just seems to bring them together.
Over Christmas I’ll hopefully finish the final bee embroideries – definitely no more after these! I can then make the rest of the pages up and start putting them into order and making them into actual pages.
This SAL is organised by Avis, please follow the links to see what everyone else has been stitching;
At our December meetings we have a tradition at Skipton Stitchers that we make a Christmas card for a swop. I remembered Sunday afternoon that I needed a card for the meeting on Monday, so a quick make was needed.
Ever since our last meeting when we stitched scenes on used tea bags, I’ve had a dozen or so tea bags drying on the radiator in my sewing room – much to the amusement of my OH – he wisely decided not to comment! This was a perfect time to try another one.
I decided to do a Christmas tree on a snowy hill, so I gathered together little scraps of lace and some strange green fibrousy stuff which was perfect for the tree.
I stitched the lace in place and then stitched the tree on using tiny gold sequins left over from my bee. I made one sequin into a star on the top, added a trunk and my teabag was finished!
I’m pretty pleased with how it came out…
I’m still tempted to make a mini book of teabag scenes, I can’t decide whether to do a series of winter ones, maybe with the words of the Christmas carol, In a Bleak Midwinter, or maybe do a couple for each season. They’re fun to do as they’re only little and so don’t take long, you can use up the scrappiest scraps on them too!
For the first time this year we also had a Christmas challenge, members could bring a piece of embroidery finished this year and everyone else voted which one was their favourite. There were about a dozen entries, a huge variety of styles, I took my garden book in…and got first prize…I was well chuffed 🙂
I went to the Knitting and Stitching show in Harrogate last month, adamant I was only going to buy one specific bee themed item…of course that went out of the window! I ended up with a kit, two patterns and a printed fabric design (which was the only one I was meant to get!)
The kit was a cross-stitch bee sampler. It was the buttons that appealed to me! They also made it a pretty quick stitch. I’m pretty sure the kit was by Trudy Anne designs, but I can’t find it on the internet to put a link in and I think I might have already thrown the pattern out!
I changed one of the threads, instead of black I used DMC4000 which is a charcoal grey and very dark brown, I do find that thread so useful, it’s such a shame it’s not more widely available. I also changed the fabric from aida to an evenweave in a nice soft honey colour. It’s more of a warm honey that the beige it looks in the photo.
This has been my handbag stitching. Someone at Skipton Stitchers on Monday asked how I got so much done, I explained that I had already done 30 minutes stitching in the cafe at 8.30 when I arrived in Skipton, I usually got to work 30 minutes early, so I stitch, I spent several hours with my OH in A&E… the bus was late in the bus station…so I stitched! All those minutes add up!
Anyway, it’s already finished, after a day stitching at Skipton Stitchers I just had a few more stitches to do and the buttons to stitch on. I think I’m going to have to add a dab of glue behind the buttons so they sit straight though.
The next bee is going to be a quick one I think, it’s a pretty embroidery from Anne Brooke.
thecraftycreek 