August Bees and Sunflowers Completed

This post is the follow-up quilting of the assembly of the August Bees and Sunflowers post from 9/15/25. I usually need to have my quilts mellow a few days before the inspiration as to how to FMQ them strikes me. This is the third banner I have completed from the Shabby Fabrics' Pieceful Patchwork series. Each banner finished at 31" x 31". This "Let it mellow for a few days" technique has worked for me on the previous two banners.

Bees
I knew once I saw that glittery, lacy fabric for the wings that I wanted to FMQ them as feathers. A favorite resource of mine is a Hooked on Feathers book ©2008 by Sally Terry, an oldie but goodie. Her technique eliminates the need to backtrack, often a source of an untidy look for a learning quilter of feathers. Then I was inspired to FMQ the background with my go-to four-petal motif, modifying it to flow around the bee, not over her. (Fact: All worker bees are female. They are the ones flying around pollinating.) I use an Angela Walters Slim® ruler only for the straight midlines on the petals, stitching the curves freeform. At first I was trying to avoid the antennae but when that proved awkward I sewed over them; the overlying stitch or two is barely visible. I was fretting for nothing. Finally, I had to decide the head and body. I slept on it and awoke with the idea to put a simple heart (2½") on her head  and one (3½") on her body using Good Measure® Heart templates by Amanda Murphy. I chose a pale yellow thread throughout, mainly to coordinate with the sunflowers. By sheer dumb luck, however, the color choice does show up well on the black head and striped body of the bee. Pale yellow does not jump out on the wings but then it's the texture, more than the pattern, that I wanted to show off the glam. Besides, I got my feather practice. The quilting pattern shows up much better on the reverse side.

Here is the book resource I used, followed by a photo of the heart and straight rulers I used for the bees.

Sunflowers
For the sunflowers I decided on the background and petals first. I used the same four petal motif as around the bees but eliminated the central "X" that helps find a center. Each motif's center was pretty much defined by the piecing. Plus there were so many straight diagonal lines introduced with the petals, I decided less was more. For the quasi-round brown center of the sunflower, I wanted to emphasize the concept of many, many seeds. I really loved the diagonal plaid fabric with a bit of glitter provided for that brown center. I've always love those images where parallel curved lines intersection other parallel curved lines at angles and give a 3-D effect, called Curved Cross-Hatching. I wanted to try doing that technique. I used an HQ Half-Circle Template and the theory worked fine. I learned however, that the effort shows up better on a solid. My pretty center fabric was somewhat obscured instead of enhanced. Oh, well. At least my efforts show up on the reverse side and I got some practice. Pebbles would have been a better choice but, as I have admitted before, I am terrible at pebbles.

Here is the HQ Half-Circle Template I used for the cross-hatching. The yellow tape across the top was my indicator to help me equally space those parallel circle arcs along two orthogonal directions. I used the outer edge, 12" diameter, as my guide. Beneath the half-circle arc is shown the HQ-Multi Clamshells tool that I used for scallops around the bee block, discussed in the following sashing section.

Border and Sashing

With the bee and sunflower blocks quilted I turned my attention to the green plaid sashing. I did a shallow scallop around each bee block (lower right area of image), sizing its width to mate with the petal motif spacing and sizing its height to be noticeably curved. In the outer sunflower print border I took my FMQ cue from the dashed straight-line in the background behind the sunflowers. I stitched jagged straight lines lined up with the dashed ones, leaving the sunflowers free of stitching so they would pop.

The height of the scallop on the bee blocks extended it too far into the narrow sashing to allow a similar curve on the sunflower blocks. A similar scallop would overlap with the scallops around the bee block scallops. I suppose this overlap is totally acceptable as in an egg and dart design (as shown in two stages of overlap in the next image) but I did not know if I was up to such planning and precision, especially in such a limited width.  So I opted for a simple straight edge in the sashing around the sunflower blocks. The contrast framing sets each pair of blocks apart as different from the other.

Finishing Details
The sleeve called only for a 3" wide strip of fabric, so I was able to make it from the same fabric as the backing. A directed by the instructions, I attached the sleeve to the top of the banner before adding the binding. I also added my grosgrain ribbon labels and the hanging sleeve before attaching my binding. Keeping it short, I put only my initials, banner month, and completion year on one label. Keeping it simple, I put a descriptive, if unimaginative, name on the other label, Bees and Sunflowers. This time I attached the brown binding from the front by machine and wrapped it around to the back to finish, hand sewing invisibly. The banner is small enough it did not take long to take make the extra effort for hand sewing. I did not want another machine stitching line distracting from the bias vibe angles of the plaid binding fabric. I learned my lesson from the sunflower centers.

The completed Pieceful Patchwork banner for August is shown hanging on the special heart scroll holder I bought solely for these monthly banners. I have just the space reserved for this 31" x31" wall hanging and swapped the June wallhanging out it for the newly finished August one. For completeness I have also shown an image of the reverse side. Since this is now three banners in a row I've made, I think it best if I switch to another project lest I get bored and disgruntled. I will leave August Bees and Sunflowers up. Sometime in the future I may be able to synchronize the banner on the wall with the appropriate month of the year. At least August is somewhat closer to September than June was.

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.

May Roses and Pansies Completed

This post is the follow-up quilting of the assembly of the May Roses and Pansies post from 8/14/25. This is the second banner I have completed from the Shabby Fabrics' Pieceful Patchwork series.

Pansies
Full, four-petaled motifs would fill in the block proper nicely. This motif is one on my go-to choices, I used it on my June Strawberries quilt post dated 9/6/25. As for the two HSTs with leaves, I wanted to add parallel lines to look like veining. Learning from my strawberry blossom post, I took a best guess at the direction of veins running from the source stem  and made the parallel lines vertical on the lower leaf and horizontal on the upper leaf. The directionality is somewhat camouflaged by the gingham fabric but a least I know I made a somewhat logical decision.

Roses
Undecided on how to quilt the yellow rose, I did the leaves first while waiting for inspiration to hit me.  For the central stem of each leaf, I sewed the spine from corner to corner, even though this deviated from a 45 degree line. This skewed approach saved me from having to deal with weird corner voids and let the veins radiate horizontally and vertically from the central spine. I used the pindots as a quasi-guide and free-formed the squiggles. For the white background however I was stricter and spaced the diagonals equidistant with the aid of a ruler. My final "aha" moment was for the yellow rose. I remembered I owned Amanda Murphy's Good Measure Every Daisy template set of four flower sizes. I quilted the largest one first, and then thought I'd insert the smaller ones concentric within. When I tried to outline the next one down in size, the template slipped and slid all over and was hard to control. Hmmm. The largest one had been manageable with the non-slip backing it came with. I picked out the sloppy mess. Then I added some extra sandpaper grippers to the back of the third one down in size and it worked beautifully. I decided not to press my luck with the second largest and the smallest. My bamboo batting can be quilted as spaced out as 8 inches so two concentric daisies were sufficient.

Here are the rulers I used for the rose and pansy blocks. I am not a slave to a specific brand. They all have their strong points. I rarely use the large HQ Right Angle ruler to guide my stitches. It is just too large for my hand to hold securely while stitching on my sit-down HQ Sweet Sixteen long arm. But it is great for setting right angles and I can use just the corner for zig zags on borders. I used it to mark my position where my point fell on the side edges of the rose block. I used the shorter Angela Walter SLIM ruler for stitching the actual straight lines. It has a gripping back and, with markings both in white and black, it is very versatile. Though hard to see in the photo, Slim also has 45 degree markings that help me stay tilted just the right amount throughout my diagonal grid. Also shown are the two sizes I used of Amanda Murphy's Daisy four template set.

The next photo is a quick comparison of the quilting patterns I chose for the two flowers. Sashing and borders are yet to be stitched.

Sashing and Borders
The inner sashing is rather narrow but leaving it without stitching seemed unfinished. Plus the sashing is a very dark purple, and I thought white thread would be distracting and purple thread ... why bother since it would not show up? As a compromise, I stitched a few arcs, six per side of a block or basically half the 3x3 setting. These arcs I stitched using the blocks themselves as a uniform spacing tool. I did use the curved edge of a HQ Versatool ruler for aid in sewing smooth contours and uniform sizing. Any curve would have sufficed but this one was a convenient size for my hand. For the mini floral print outer border, I stitched free form wishbones, referring to Angela Water's YouTube guide Machine Quilting Border Corners to navigate around the corners.

Finishing Details
I added my grosgrain ribbon labels. I also added the hanging sleeve before attaching my binding. On the Strawberries kit for June, I made the sleeve in the same fabric as the binding per the instructions. It shows up rather glaringly on the the back. For the June kit, I made the hanging sleeve out of the same fabric as the backing. Enough extra backing fabric was provided in the kit that I could do so. The sleeve is well camouflaged along that upper edge; and, by the way, so is my FMQ on the backing. I much prefer this same fabric option and will repeat making the sleeve out of the backing fabric whenever there is enough. I intend to make other months of these Shabby Fabric Pieceful Patchwork kits.

Voila! Another month of Pieceful Patchwork banners is completed. It is shown in the next photo hanging on a special heart scroll holder.

I thoroughly enjoy these 31" x 31" whimsical, interesting kits from Shabby Fabrics. They give me a reasonably sized opportunity to practice my FMQ, while granting me the satisfaction of quickly completing a project. There is enough repetition to get better, but not enough repetition to get bored.

June Strawberries Completed

This post is the followup quilting of the assembly of the strawberry wall hanging post from 7/8/25. Travel to Oklahoma and Visitors from Colorado stalled its progress somewhat but most of the delay was my indecision on how to quilt it. I was pretty clear on what  I wanted to do with the strawberry blossoms, but the strawberries themselves did not speak as loudly to me.

Strawberry Blossoms
Full, four-petaled motifs would fill in the block proper nicely and two-petal half motifs along the outer edges would complete the look. I was unsure how to navigate the corners and put in half size four petal motif which I did not like (second photo). Later it occurred to me I did not have to change the scale, just the number of petals. I know the adage that to be a better quilter it is wiser to ignore the little goofs ... wiser to get better at quilting rather than get better at picking out.  In this particular case though, I did pick that tiny motif out in favor of a same scale one petal, quarter motif.

As for the squares with leaves, I wanted to add parallel lines to look like veining. One of my goofs here I left in. Another I had no choice but to pick out. On the left, the gingham square leaf is "upside down" looking at the vein directions. I did convince myself that the mis-directionality gets lost in the two-tone plaid of the gingham print. If it bugs me, I can always pick it out and fix it later. The one on the right I caught myself in one leaf when I had forgotten the center line to act as a spine. Not only would this not look like leaf veining, but the error really shows up on the solid fabric. I took the time to pick out and re-quilt that leaf.

Strawberries
As an alternative to having a plan, I chose a "decide as you go" approach. As a no brainer but still moving forward I quilted parallel diagonals in the white background around the strawberry. I needed ideas for FMQing the sawtooth star inside the strawberry and I found inspiration with Angela Walters. She treated each pair of triangles as a diamond-like parallelogram. I sewed straight lines as in Angela's sample but in the future I might make them arcs.

The remaining components I impulsively quilted whatever caught my fancy and was within my skill set. Pebbles may have looked cute in the strawberry, but my pebbles are awful — not awesome, mind you — awful. Instead, in the RED area I opted for echoing the inner star and scalloping the outer edges. In the GREEN leaf areas, I placed arcs around the edges of each leaf at the top of the berry and squiggles at the top of the strawberry cap beneath the stem.

Sashing and Borders
The inner sashing were plain zig zags and I could use the fabric as my guidelines. The outer border was graced with a single line of scallops using my  HQ Mini Scallop Ruler. Less is more; also, less is conveniently lazy.

The Final Finishes
I embroidered my two labels and attached them to the back corners of the wall hanging. On the left are my initials, year of completion, and the month the quilt represents; the unimaginative name I gave the quilt is on the right.

Here is the strawberry quilt, finished at, 31" x 31". I splurged and bought the heart scroll holder. Initially I balked at having to pay an additional shipping charge because of its length. I caved and mollified myself, reasoning that I planned to make this wall hanging for several other months' kits and the shipping cost could be shared by those future wall hangings. I was already getting the kits and holder at a discounted sale price from Shabby Fabrics. Waiting within my stash I have the kits for April, May, and August and the pdf patterns for February, March, and July. So far September does not have a huge appeal to me for kit or pattern. That heart scroll holder will get used.

The back shows the quilting. I followed the instructions exactly and hence the hanging sleeve is the same as the binding fabric. For the next kit I do, I believe there is enough backing fabric to make the sleeve out of the backing fabric instead and I think I will do that. This was a fun project and I look forward to working on playing with the other months.

Make It Merry Month Four

Well, the honeymoon is officially over. In Month Four the assignment was to make six Block #6's and two Block #7's. I had problems with Block #6.

Mistake number one: I thought I was cutting out the fabric for the Block #6's but goofed by having my binder page open to Block #5 from Month Three. I was very lucky and very happy that the Fat Quarter Shop had provided me enough fabric that I could still cut out the correct components for Block #6. I was able to salvage some squares by trimming them down and by cutting some Block #5 mint squares on the diagonal. The large green triangles I had to cut anew but, hopefully, some of the green squares I could not use I can save for future use. The three trays in the next photo contain, from left to right: duplicate cut Block #5 pieces, correctly cut Block #6 pieces, leftover squares from duplicate cut  Block #5.

Mistake number two: I began making the Block #6's in a chain piece fashion all at once. I should have made just one to check out the pattern because there was an error in it. I checked the Fat Quarter Shop and the internet in general for any errata but found none so I emailed the Fat Quarter Shop with the following information.

corresponding to figure on the left.
1. Directions are to attach triangle Ds (PinePines and Berries fabric) to edge where there is the corner of Red squares A (Red Tossed Berries Fabric)
2. Directions continue to attach triangle Fs (Green Polka Dots fabric) to edge where there is the corner of Green Squares B (Green Stars Fabric)

corresponding to figure on the right
3. The diagram  says to add Triangles G (Green Polka Dots Fabric) and Triangles E (Pine Pine Berries Fabric) next
4. The adjacency of the D and E triangles and the F and G triangles can not be met if D and F had been attached as previously instructed.
5. A squares should point to outer FG combo and B squares should point to outer DE combo.

proposed error correction
6. Perhaps the addition of D and F was interchanged?
7. Alternatively I could interchange the G and E final corner additions but this would not match final product.
8. I found no place where the resolution of this errata was discussed.

 

Here was the prompt response from the Fat Quarter Shop

Thank you for choosing Fat Quarter Shop!
Yes, we are aware of this discrepancy in the pattern. I'm sorry about that!
The directions are correct but the image at the bottom is wrong. The other images on the page are correct!
I'm sorry for the confusion this has probably caused-I hope this helps!
Have a great day!

I have seen this kit and its accompanying pattern available from other vendors, not necessarily in a six-month BOM format, yet it is very disappointing that not one vendor has seen fit to post errata data for a known discrepancy! 

I took off the first round of triangles and corrected their order of attachment by interchanging the D and F pieces so as to duplicate the final configuration. Removing bias pieces however is tricky and I may have stretched them a bit when trying to detach and re-attach. This is my worst block and it really is quite sloppy.  Yuck ... center four patch is not square and not uniformly centered. I will most definitely make a new block for this one.

So far, in previous months, cutting pieces oversize and trimming them to size has worked well. That is not so true with adding oversize triangles. The directions warn that the points of the four patches may not fall exactly at the seam line but assure that that is OK. They also repeatedly iterate at each step "Do not trim". I can accept if the mint background four patches float uniformly centered within the four corner triangles but that does not turn out to be the case. The blocks did not finish as precisely at 6½" as I would have liked, a few even less that 6¼" in one direction. Unacceptable! Wisely though, all the outer edges are either on the straight of grain or on the cross grain. I plan to revisit my extra fabric situation and remake all six of these blocks — the one in the upper right for which I showed a close-up, at the very least.

The Block #7's, two of them, went much more smoothly. Here are those two blocks. I have oriented them as they will appear as the bow loops in the completed quilt. The six Block #6's go on the outer edges of the wreath on the left, top, and right.

Despite this setback, I am still looking forward to receiving Month Five. Month Five provides me with the added incentive that I can procrastinate remaking those Block #6's.