Bloom – Remember the Honey Bees

Oct 26, 2019 | 0 comments

Here is another quilt that I made recently, featuring Honey Bees and lamenting the loss of these essential insects in my garden. This quilt features my hand painted background, and fusible applique plus machine embroidery. http://marytransom.co.nz/bee-no-more/  Bee No More, uses more tulle and organza, but I was just trying it out on this quilt. 

I don’t have a lot of progress photos of the quilt.
I used fabric paints to create the background fabric.
Then I cut it up a bit to make it more interesting.
The flower was actually yellow in the photo I used but I decided it needed to be pink to complement the background.

Using my own hand dyed fabrics, I made the flower separately, and did a lot of machine stitching on it.
The honey bees were made by machine embroidery stitching over a drawn and painted image. Tulle was used for the wings.

Here’s a photo of the quilt in progress. To make these lower flowers and leaves, I made a lot of machine stitchery with threads and fabrics between two layers of tulle, and then cut out the flowers and leaves to make this bottom layer. These and the big leaves and flowers were added after I had quilted the background.