one bee continues, and a new swap begins

This month for the Seams Perfect bee on Flickr, Brianna switched things up a bit. She sent each of us some bits of fabric that she's been collecting over time. Her goal is a bedcover for the future guest room in a house she has not yet moved into, and she wants to play with negative space between the blocks. Because of the open-ended finished design, she merely made suggestions on the block style (square within a square) for coherence, but asked for different sized finished blocks. My initial intention was to make 3 different blocks, one of which would be on the smaller side of things, but somehow the smaller one grew so I could get the right combo of prints and colors, and I ended up with 2 blocks between 14" and 16".

The outer border seemed a little weak to me, so...

Now, on to the new swap I've joined. This was a hard decision for me, only because I feel like I have had some bum luck on the last couple of swaps in which I've participated. For the I *heart* the '80s swap I believe that I am the only member remaining who has NOT received her item. And the ship date was August 1st. The last communique I got from my swap mama indicated that my partner dropped the ball on tracking the package (though I am honestly dubious). And so it goes. The previous swap I participated in through Flickr I felt was kind of lazily administered. I got my item, and though it's nice, it's not a great fit, and there was a detail about the pairings that I thought was less-than-thoughtful. Even in real life swaps I've gotten the short straw - my guild did a block swap, where we were to finish a small item for the original designer to be returned to her. That was in May, I think. No sign of that one, either. But THIS swap is new, with a short turn-around, and from what I can tell a very attentive and vigilant administrator. the Nubees block swap is a one-month commitment, with hives of 6 members each. You work from your own stash, choosing one uniform block design for the month, and conforming the colors to your hive mates' preferences. For example, one of my hive mates wants to do a (relatively) traditional Christmas quilt sampler, so this is the block I made for her:

Another of the hive mates is doing a housewarming quilt for her son, for his first apartment, and wanted to go with black, red and white modern look:

I've gotten 4 of the 6 blocks for this month done (6 including myself). Here are two more:

I'm having fun (as I tend to do with these block swaps / bees) and am happy to have a chance to participate this month, but we'll see what next month brings. Hopefully better success with swap items than I have had the last few months.