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.