Busy Bees

My interpretation of this theme is perhaps an obvious one,  an entrance to a beehive.  Bonded appliqué hexagon shapes applied to a hand dyed, printed background to form the hive and bee shapes printed onto a different piece of hand dyed, printed background, then joined together.  I felt the placement of the bees was important, because I wanted them to portray a sense of flying home.

The machine embroidery stitch used in amongst the hexagons was chosen because of its’ similarity in shape to that of the hexagons.  However many times I tell myself to think carefully about doing continuous quilting,  I never seem to remember and the fastening off of all the individual machining took a while!

As the hand seeding and quilting progressed, I felt that it needed an injection of colour and the bright orange beads were added, which I felt provided that.  Freestyle machine embroidery was used on and around the bee shapes, which made them appear to be flying out of the quilt.

A few lessons learned on this piece, I just hope I get to remember some of them.

Close up view