I am so thrilled to be sharing the Beatrice quilt pattern with you today! Beatrice is a modern bee quilt pattern that is layer friendly and fat quarter friendly!
Today, I'm sharing the layer cake version of it, which is on the cover featuring Sweet As Honey fabric so let's get into it!
A Modern Bee Quilt Pattern
Before going into this specific sample, let's talk about the inspiration behind Beatrice! Almost a year ago exactly, in June of 2025 I submitted my Sweet As Honey collection to Riley Blake Designs.
The idea for this fabric collection came to me while listening to one of my favorite artists, Hozier, and seeing videos of him talking about his bee keeping in Ireland. As I listened to his song Too Sweet, the title of the fabric collection just kind of popped into my mind along with the general theme: Sweet As Honey, inspired by bees and all things spring. After that afternoon, the idea wouldn't leave my mind so I got to work on it.
As I worked on the collection, I also started thinking about what quilt patterns I would pair with it. I knew I wanted something floral, which is where Twirling Tulips came in, but I felt like having a fabric collections all about bees had to have a bee pattern to go with it as well.
For the Beatrice, I wanted a quilt pattern that is clean and modern, and that showcased the fabrics in the collection. Sometimes, designing for precuts can be a little tricky, but once I had the shape of the wings down, every thing came together rather quickly! The trick was making sure the stripes alternated just so, so that the featured fabric didn't touch.
After I finished my first mockup of this pattern, I sent it to a couple of friends and they loved it as much as I did, so I knew I had to make it happened. One of them, Sarah of Sarah Jean Makes, called the pattern Beatrice. It was simply too cute not to use it, so Beatrice, the Bee quilt was born!
What To Love This Bee Quilt Pattern
I love, love Beatrice but here's a short list of things you'll also love about this adorable bee quilt pattern
Precut Friendly
As I mentioned above, Beatrice is layer cake friendly (10" square precuts), but it's also fat quarter friendly! Both of these options give you plenty of opportunity to play with fabric and showcase your favorite prints alongside these bees.
Traditionally Pieced
One thing I really wanted to avoid with this pattern was anything tricky like appliqué or FPP, and thankfully that was easily accomplished! Each bee in this quilt pattern is traditionally pieced with no tricky piecing. There are a few snowball corners (also called stitch-and-flip) but even confident beginners can easily tackle those.
Beginner Friendly
What I love most about Beatrice is that it is a beginner friendly quilt pattern! I'd say probably confident beginner simply because there's some smaller pieces in the antenna portion of each bee block, but I specifically made sure the antennas didn't include seam matching so if they are a little off, it's still okay!
Using A Layer Cake
For this first sample of Beatrice, I used a layer cake – or the equivalent, since I had to get this ready from advanced yardage for H+H Americas! It honestly killed me a little not being able to share the bee blocks as I finished them because they're just so dang cute.
Each bee block uses one layer cake square (10" x 10") for the wings and the color stripes and since there are 30 bees in a throw size quilt, you end up using most of the layer cake pack (which usually include 42 10" squares) – this makes Beatrice the perfect pattern to showcase your favorite floral or spring inspired fabric collections!
And with the left overs, you can either make a baby size quilts (9 bees!) or some throw pillows to go with the main quilt.
Long Arming
Since this sample is one I made for H+H Americas and I was working on four quilts plus other smaller projects for the show, I sent Beatrice off to longarming with one of my favorite people – Ashley of The Hen House Quilting!
I knew from the get go that I wanted something flow-y and organic for the quilting, something to add movement to the overall look of this quilt. After some internal debate, I picked the Soho pantograph and I just love how it almost looks like the path of bees flying around.
For the binding, I picked one of the striped prints in Sweet As Honey, specifically the denim one that matches the body of the bees. For the backing, I picked something I had one hand – Shades in Midnight.
Quilt Information
Quilt Pattern: Beatrice by Cotton and Joy
Fabric: Sweet As Honey 10" Stacker, Confetti Cottons Solids in Denim (dark details) and Putty (background).
Binding: Stripes in Blue from Sweet As Honey
Backing: Shades in Midnight
Pieced on my Janome M8
Quilted by Ashley of The Hen House Quilting
Panto: Soho
