Gifts for a Beekeeper: Wall Quilt & Composition Notebook with Cover

Hello my Bizzy Bees. A good friend of mine bought a beehive so she could raise bees in her backyard. My husband assembled the beehive for her and she will pick up the bees in April to put into her new hive.

So of course that got me thinking about making her something for her new beekeeping adventure. I wanted to make a cover for a composition notebook so she could take notes and jot down important bee things to refer to later. So I went with Sotak Handmade tutorial for a composition book cover. I love her patterns and have made several of her bags and other things. Thanks Svetlana for the tutorial!

Well, I forgot about turning the fabric under for the book cover to place the book into later and so I placed my Beekeeper gnome too close to the right edge of the fabric I cut out. Oh well, I thought I can make this into a small wall quilt to match the book cover and I will pay closer attention to the making of the book cover when I start to make that later. So I made the quilt (scroll down a bit to see it) first and then made the book cover next.

I love how they both came out and I knew Tara would love them both too. 

The front of the composition book cover with a gnome holding a beehive.

 I added the word, "Bee" because that was all that would fit there. 

I found a little bee embroidery appliqué in my things and added it to the cover. I pieced together scraps of blues for the background, since I didn't have a large enough piece of the blue fabric that I used for the back of this cover and for the wall hanging. I love piecing backgrounds as it adds more interest and uses up more scraps. All the fabrics I used for the appliqué were scraps too.

This is the back of the notebook cover. Isn't this the cutest little bee? I found this on Pinterest, but the head was made out of denim. Since I already had some circles cut out of felt (using the circle die cuts from Crafter's Edge), I only needed to cut out the pair of wings and the black stripes.

 I hand blanket stitched around the felt pieces and added the embroidered antennae, stinger and smile. I used little black buttons for his eyes and red buttons for the ends of the antennae. He makes me smile he is so cute!

Inside the book. See there is the folded over sides to hold the book that I forgot about when I started the beekeeper gnome that later became the little wall quilt.

I used All Sew Petite's Pen/Pencil Bookmark Holder (a free tutorial) to add over the notebook so Tara will always have a pen handy. Thanks Monika for this great pen holder tutorial and video!

Here is the pen holder that can be made using scraps of vinyl, cork, or other non-fraying material. 

This is the small size pen holder that will hold 2-3 pens. Monika also includes a wider pen holder that will hold more pens.

The pen holder is made with elastic (I used fold over elastic for this one) and you slide it over the page to use as a bookmark or over the entire outside of the book, however you want to use it.

Here is the little wall quilt that I started making first as the book cover, but had to make it into a wall quilt as I explained earlier. Tara scored double because of my mistake, lol!

I had more space to put the word, Beekeeper on the quilt, so that was nice.

Here they both are together, with the pen holder over the book (the pen is on the back side). I made each gnome in a different direction.

Happy Beekeeping Tara!

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