August Bees and Sunflowers

The Pieceful Patchwork kit for August by Shabby Fabrics has bees and sunflowers, all in warm, golden honey tones. I cut all the fabrics per the instructions. Per the directions each piece is labeled with a letter and the intended block, Bee or Sunflower. An improvement to the pattern would be to not repeat letters. I solved that issue by using different color Alphabitties for the two blocks, pink for the Bee and blue for the Sunflower, sorting them on my sewing themed melamine dedicated tray set.  A rectangular tray is for each block and the larger square tray is for the sashing and border fabric strips, which have sizes but not letter designations.

Cutting

Bee Block
I assembled two bee blocks. The striped body was sewn in strips and then cut on a 45°. The wings are out of a glittery fabric that is so pretty, having a light lacy look. Thinking ahead, I already am getting inspired to FMQ them with a feather motif in each. The head has a nice detail of sprouting two antennae to be embroidered in a back stitch. In the next photo they are drawn in but not yet stitched

I have not embroidered in years; my hoop and floss have long been buried somewhere in my craft closet. The floss container was obvious and in my face when I opened the folding doors, but the task to find a hoop would be daunting; I seriously considered running out to the store and buying a new one. But I stayed steadfast, went through several plastic bins before eventually indeed finding a hoop. The effort was not wasted. In the process I uncovered a lot of stuff I was hanging onto for no defendable reason. I found several candidates for donation. I was determined not to be deterred from sewing those antennae, so I set the unearthed items aside with a note to self to deal with them before the end of the month. 

I used a micron marker to trace the antennae from the photo in the pattern. Wisely, an enlarged section of the bee's head had been printed at full scale so there was no guesswork on what size and exactly where to place those antennae. Seeing all that floss in my closet was a reminder but not required for this project. Enough black floss was sent with the kit to embroider the antennae on a whole hive's colony of bees. Two strands of floss was recommended but I used three strand to make the fine antennae just a tad thicker. 

Sunflower Block

Learning from the Bee blocks, I transferred all the pieces for the Sunflower blocks to a larger square tray so I could see all the letters at once. For the sunflower petals there are eight 3½" squares that are made up of a mint background piece and two golds. As in the case with this series these squares are made up oversized and then trimmed down uniformly. I goofed for a couple by trimming them before pressing open which made the squares too small. Instead of being 3½", two squares were slightly bigger that 3". I had enough extra gold fabric that with some head scratching cutting and pieced pieces I could recover. As it turns out I did not need to used the pieced pieces but I kept them as orphan blocks

A Sunflower block is shown in the next photo. The points came out great. I was pretty lucky considering my unthinking goof.

Orphan Blocks
Here are four orphan blocks I have from trimmings. The black and gold one on the left is from the cut-off corners of the two bee blocks. It is far from perfect but unique enough I am hanging on to it for a bit. It is crooked but measures ~ 6½". In the middle are two pinwheels made from cut off corners from the bee's wings. The teeny-tiny one is 2" square and the larger one 3½"; that lacy, glittery fabric was too appealing to toss. On the far right is a 5½" block made from those four pieced and recovered blocks from my sunflower trimming mistake. On a closer look, two of the four larger triangle gold corners are from pieced fabric. (Spoiler alert — the two left corners are pieced.) There is a fair amount of leftover fabric, too but I did not take the time to catalog it. Someday, maybe, in the future, in the far future, I will finally figure out a scrap management system. For now collecting orphan blocks is the level of effort I am willing to expend. The challenge of sewing them up from trimmings is fun.

Assembly

The two Bee blocks and two Sunflower blocks are assembled along with the green plaid sashing and sunflower print border. As is my habit, this top has to sit and mellow for a while as I decide how to quilt it. In the interim I will make the binding and labels. Hopefully by the time I have cut the backing and batting and sandwiched it all, I will have a direction to proceed.