The People Chose Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees

Regular followers will be aware that for over 3 years now I have run a themed SAL on the first Saturday of each month.  First we spent 26 months doing The Alphabet Club and then 12 months of the Zodiac.  Now I have decided to listen to the People and post about your choice of theme.  Each month I ask for suggestions on the blog and then make a poll in the IHSW Facebook Group from those suggestions.

September - Bees

October - Cats
November - Autumnal Colours

Bees are very popular in stitching designs, they are probably our favourite insect (ladybirds being a close second) and they work well with floral and garden designs as well as bee-ing very pun-friendly.   They are quite Bee-utiful too.

The largest design I have stitched with bees was a present for a friend who gave me the kit when she swapped stitching for a career in crochet.  (Seriously, find out more here - Rosina Plane).  Anyway, she gave me a box of stash with the fee being I would stitch Gathering Honey for her.  It took me a little longer than anticipated but I got it to her for her 25th Wedding Anniversary.

Gathering Honey by Jannlynn Designs

Close-up of the bees:

Just Nan is fond of a bee and here are two of her designs - Beehive Violets at the top and Big Bee, Little Bee at the bottom (although both my bees are the same size).

This is a sweet little one I stitched back in 1999 from a needlework magazine.  There was a series of smalls designed to teach you how to do speciality stitches.

That's it for designs I have stitched myself but here is some inspiration.  

Nora Corbett has recently released this pair of Bees; Miss Honey Bee and Miss Queen Bee:

The Primitive Hare has a number of bee patterns as well as beehive printed fabric to stitch them on! 

Beth Twist from Heartstring Samplery also loves bees.  She even has a couple of hives and some of her YouTube videos have film of her showing them and explaining how to look after them.

I love her little fob series, these would look cute in Vicki's cubby I thought.

Now it's over to you. All you have to do is make a post on the theme of Bees, mention The People's Choice SAL (you can copy the picture I used at the top of this post and in my side bar) and my blog. Please link up using the URL of the actual blog post, not the home page of your blog. I look forward to seeing what you all post.

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Finally, I need your suggestions for the next poll.  Any thing, no matter how obscure, weird or random will go into the poll.  Keep the theme suggestions to a single word or two - so you could have Cats, or Blue, or Holidays, or Warmth etc.  Really anything which could be illustrated in cross stitch.

Looking forward to reading them all!