April Bee Blocks

I finally sat down and worked on my bee blocks for April, the envelopes seem to just sit on my sewing table giving me the evil eye until I break into them and get them done.  Don't get me wrong, I really do enjoy working on these blocks, as I've said before I really like trying new things and different techniques, but I think I've gotten to a point to where I may have bitten off slightly more than I can comfortably chew.  I feel like I haven't worked on anything of "mine" in weeks, and every time I sit down to sew its for a bee or swap.  While these things are addictive, I think in the future I will treat them like accessories...what is that Stacey and Clinton say?  Put on one less accessory than you think necessary?  Anyways, something like that.  Rambling over.  Onto what I actually have gotten done!

This block is for the 3 x 6 bee caretaker swap.  My secret partner listed aqua/turquoise and orange as her color preferences, so I hand pieced some hexies together with fabrics from my stash and then sashed them with some kona white.  This will be going out in the mail tomorrow, hope she likes it!!

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These blocks are for Dustin in the Solid Bee.  He requested we make either flowers or butterfly blocks of any shape or size.  These blocks are actually quite small, the butterfly is about 7 inches x 8 inches and the flower  is about 8 inches x 10 inches.

I paper pieced both of these blocks using the pattern found here.  I really enjoy paper piecing.  Now I don't have the patience to do an entire quilt out of paper pieced blocks, but its kind of like paint by number only with fabric!

For the Simply Strings bee, Suzy requested these really fun strip pieced block.  She sent along instructions for us to follow, and these blocks came together quite quickly. 

I am really excited to see how this quilt top comes together, as everyones blocks are following the same pattern, yet slightly different!

I know this technically doesn't fall under the category of bee blocks, but  I've also been working on my pouch to send to my partner in the pretty {little} pouch swap.  Lucky for me my partner seems 100% open to about anything I want to make for her!  I pulled out my purse frames and started playing around with some patterns to see what I came up with.  

This is what I have so far.  I'm not 100% thrilled with the shape yet.  As I scour etsy for ideas, I'm looking for a shape more like this...I think I may have it figured out, but for a first trial, this isn't a bad option, if I end up keeping this one, I'm sure I can find a use for it!!

Anyways,  happy Easter everyone!