Applique a Bee

 The warmer spring weather brings out the blooms along with the bugs and especially the bees.   To me they're fun to watch as the hover around me when I'm on the patio.  We have a yellow jasmine on our fence that's full of buds and I think the bees are patiently waiting for their blooms.  

The Virginia Quilt Museum in Harrisonburg Virginia has put out their 2022 mini challenge schedule where you can submit 15" quilts to be displayed and sold - or not, they will mail it back to you when the exhibit ends.   Go HERE to learn more.  

For the summer exhibit, I wanted to make a mini with large blooms and a bee in flight. Even though the flora and fauna category was for the spring exhibit, I enjoy summertime blooms.  Click here to see the schedule for the mini challenges for 2022.  

I drew a rough sketch of some Asters.  

And I had some reference photos to get some ideas.   

Originally, I thought green was going to be the background.  Once the flowers went on, I didn't like the green and the flowers looked like they were just floating.  I took my scissors and started cutting away the green saving some of it around each flower for leaves.  

The brown grid batik was an experiment with bleach and I didn't end up using it, so I kept it for a future use...now... as the background for these flowers.  

I chose the arrangement and sewed a straight stitch around each flower and leaf combination using polyester monopoly thread.  

I drew out a bee onto paper and then copied it using a lightbox onto fusible.  I thought about embroidering the entire bee, but ultimately choosing applique.  So, each component of the bee was traced onto fusible and I chose a black cotton for his body.  The yellow/gold is lame.  The wings are a blue hue of organza.  I used silk thread to attach the wings and add the lines.  

I thread painted the flowers with variegated threads and metallic thread.  My bee needed more so I added his antennae, eyes and a center square of lame. 

I think I'm happy with it and now it's on to finishing with binding, sleeve and label.