I feel somewhat strongly about the rules of participating in quilting bees on Flickr. Maybe sometimes the “rules” aren’t spelled out clearly enough, but I think they’re generally pretty intuitive. At the very least: communicate. Speak up when you get the fabric in the mail and when you send it back. Make the block according to the instructions in a timely manner and send it right back. If life gets in the way and delays you, speak up. If you find yourself over-committed, speak up and step down.
If I decide to do quilting bees again when this year is over, and I think I will, I may have to hand-pick people who have been the most with-it in my current groups. I mean, I understand that signing up for something like this is a bit of a roll of the dice, but man do we have some flaking going on. Sometimes the bee leader, herself! (Don’t even get me started…) And yes, it’s just a hobby. It’s just fabric. This is not life or death, obviously. But it is still a commitment, and you need to show respect for the other people in the group.
The majority of the people, of course, are responsible. They participate, they do what they signed up to do. But man, a couple of flakers can really ruin the whole party.
Alright, rant over. On to the blocks I made this month!
For Scraptastic, the Bee I administer. (And, may I say, one with NO overdue blocks at the moment! Way to go, ladies!). Kristin wanted raw-edged circle blocks a la the Cluck Cluck Sew tutorial. I made four and cut them into quarters. They were pretty easy (especially with the circle cutting rotary tool!), but you have to go slowly to keep the puckers out of the seam. I’d love to make a quilt like this, but I may wuss out and make larger blocks. 
For One Block Over, Victoria sent all the pieces already cut and instructions for this insane nine-patch-and-flying-geese block. It’s very cool and scrappy, but I CANNOT believe she has already made eight of them, herself! This was nearly 100 little pieces, the squares for the flying geese were only 1 3/4″. Dang. Mine did not turn out as perfectly as I might have liked, but hopefully it’ll work well in Victoria’s quilt.
For A Piece of Work B, Becca sent a focus fabric (the birds, in my case), some Essex linen-blend, and some pieces of coordinating fabrics. She wanted kind of improv-y blocks in any size/shape up to 12.5″ square, anything goes. The first one I made was somewhat sedate – a fussy-cut bird placed a little off-center, the block not quite square.
The second one was definitely more improvised. A little wacky, but hopefully it’ll work well with the others. The dark strip on the right side is actually a sort of gradated purple, not quite as dark as it looks in the picture.
For Bee Addicted 2, I traded with another member who had surgery and wasn’t quite ready to send her fabrics out. I was supposed to have April for my month, but had no problem bumping it up. I’ve had these fabrics for ages – they’re the ones in the photo in my header! I bought them for a pattern, which I then decided I didn’t like, and then couldn’t for the life of me decide what to do with them. So I sent everyone a 6×20″ piece of each of the five prints, plus a piece of Kona Bone, and asked for any block that was made of squares and rectangles. Contributions from other people’s stashes were welcome, but I wanted the fabrics I sent to still play the biggest role.
The one I made for myself was plagued with math errors on my part, so I still need to add a bit more red to the sides to make it square (whoops!). But I really do like the design, and those tiny 1/4″ white borders.
Charming Robin is a big fat goose egg this month. I never got my package, and the bee seems to be completely falling apart. I’m thinking about asking the person currently holding my fabric to just send it back to me, and step away. It was a good idea, but it doesn’t seem to be working as well in practice as it would in theory. Ugh.
