Sleeping Bee Applique Embroidery Design, Bumblebee Stitch Pattern, Instant Download

She told me she had been looking for a bee design that wasnt the usual cartoony clipart version, and this one was exactly right, she ended up stitching it onto 6 baby onesies for a shower gift set last autumn. Its a sleeping bumblebee, fat and fuzzy, lying on its side like it just had enough for the day. The body is wide and rounded with golden yellow and warm buff stripes separated by dark brown banding, and the 2 wings spread out flat above like a little butterfly silhouette. Seven thread colours: rust-brown, cream, mid-brown, golden yellow, pale warm yellow, dark brown, and black for all the outlines.

Tape a firm tearaway behind the fabric if youre going on woven cotton, and use a water-soluble topping on textured or pile surfaces so the first stitches dont sink. The wing sections use underlay followed by satin stitch edging rather than solid fill, which is what gives them the light airy see-through look on the finished piece. Density is 698 across the body sections so you get good coverage and texture, not flat or thin. Stitch count goes from 13,063 on the smaller side up to 32,398 on the largest.

6 colour changes, 7 stops, 61 trims across the design. Give your machine time on the dense body fill sections and check thread tension after each stop. The design is portrait oriented, taller than wide: the largest size reaches 7.5 inches tall and around 6 inches wide, so it suits a kids tee front, a bag face, or a cushion panel where you want a design that fills vertically.

Pick a thread with a little sheen for the wing colour if you can, it makes the veined satin stitch edges stand out against the matt body thread sections. Keep hoop tension even and dont rush the satin edging sections or the outline stitches will skip. Run it slow on a scrap piece first, check density is right for your fabric weight, then move over to the real project.