If you want to change the item's bounding rectangle, you must first call prepareGeometryChange(). This notifies the scene of the imminent change, so that it can update its item geometry index; otherwise, the scene will be unaware of the item's new geometry, and the results are undefined (typically, rendering artifacts are left within the view).
From the QGraphicsItem documentation:
If you want to change the item's bounding rectangle, you must first call prepareGeometryChange(). This notifies the scene of the imminent change, so that it can update its item geometry index; otherwise, the scene will be unaware of the item's new geometry, and the results are undefined (typically, rendering artifacts are left within the view).