bees bees and more bees

I'm in a few quilting bee's, and as its the beginning of the month, that means new fabric for new blocks!  I'm in the 3x6 sampler quilt mini bee.  This bee is a little different, there are 7 people per "beehive", and the idea is each person requests the color theme of their block they would like and some general guidelines, and each person then makes the same block for each member of their beehive in their requested colors. 

For my blocks I decided to to a wagon wheel block using the tutorial from Three Kitchen Fairies.  This was my first attempt at anything circular...I think each block turned out better than the one before it, but I'm not sold on doing this block again. 

I posed this picture a few weeks ago of block #1 for bellsbellsjo:

Block #2 is for Shruti, she requested rainbow colors in pastels that will be put into a baby quilt for her niece.  I found a Moda charm pack of pretty soft girlie prints I had laying around and thought these would be perfect:

Block #3 was for windowshopmom.  She requested bright greens, grays and bright orange.  Bright colors...right up my alley! 

Block 4 was for oneblessedmama4.  She requested orange, red and chocolate brown and said that the blocks will be put into a quilt for her bedroom.  I was unsure about the color combination, but I LOVE!

Block #5 is for quiltedoma...our mama bee for our beehive.  She requested a rainbow/surprise!  These blocks will be put into a play quilt for her grandchildren, so I spy and bright colors were welcome and encouraged.  She requested not much white be used, as there is a good chance it will get alot of use, so I decided on dark gray as a background, eventhough my gut wanted white.

Block #6 is for jenjohnston.  She requested blue, green and white to add to her color spectrum quilt she is working on. 

Here's all 5 (minus bellsbellsjo's, as hers is already shipped out) on my design wall:

I'm really enjoying this bee, and will certainly be taking part in the next round, starting in January.  I like getting to see color combinations that I likely would not have decided to work with (like the red orange and brown) and see how they look together.  It's also nice to get to work with a more complex block as you only have to make 6 of them.  As opposed to most bees, this bee runs 3 months long, so theres plenty of time to get your blocks completed.  Definitly check it out on Flickr!

Up next was the November block for the Simply Strings bee.  This is a great bee, as we use all kinds of string quilt methods!  This month was Kristy's, loveoldhouses, month.  She chose a string block following the tutorial explained by rachel at psiquilt.  She sent lots of scrap strips along and encouraged us to add our own if we'd like!  Her only request was that we use the green strips as the center.  I just love the scrappy look of this, hope Kristy does too!

Lastly, my fabric arrived the other day for the solid block bee, and it was was craftymsp/Marie's month.  She had a super fun idea, and requested that our blocks be inspired by Tetris!  she sent along gray as the background and I received a bright turquoise and a bright reddish orange color and this is what I came up with: 

The colors look a little harsh here, but I'm pleased for the most part with how it turned out.  Improvisational piecing like this isn't my forte, but this was such a neat idea, I can't wait to see what the finished quilt will look like!

~Jessica