Julianne's Annual Bee's Challenge, 2016

I am a 13+ year member of the Piecemeal Quilters Bee.  For the past several years, we have issued annual challenges to each other.  In the past, we've made rows for each other, self portraits in fabric, bags, pillows, and all kinds of blocks.  This year, it was geese.  Gaggles and gaggles of geese!

Each of the 8 bee members created 8 geese for each other member. The flying geese blocks were all to be 2" x 4" finished, and the recipients could specify color requests.  The finished (and a couple of unfinished) projects reflect the variation of quilting styles and personalities in our bee, and it's always so much fun to see what each other creates.  

As we were creating our geese for each other, we hinted at each other's progress and sort-of showed our work...without color.

We sent each other lots of photos of "inspiration" quilts, but nothing beats the final projects!  Here goes:

Here's Lori Rice's quilt (my absolute favorite!).  Lori simply asked for "bright geese on a low volume background", and she magically made the colors work!

 

Here's Carol Frank's Quilt (to be a donation!).  Carol requested specific colors (and sizes) from each bee-mate.  She added quite a few of her own geese!

 

Here's Tina Schwager's stunner, quilted by her.  She asked for "all scrappy with light or ivory backgrounds".  She also had many more geese to make!

 

Here's Ann Young's work-in-progress.  She had specific color requests for each bee-mate.

 

Here's Shirley Hendrix' wall hanging.  She gave us a piece of fabric to use as color inspiration, asking for light or gray backgrounds.

 

Here is Sandy Fitzpatrick's work-in-progress.  She gave us all paint chips in blues and greens, asking for white and ivory backgrounds, with her living room's decor in mind.

 

Here is mine - I asked for teals and grays (but lived in a different house when the project began).  I added purple geese to make a small wall hanging.

 

Kelly Hutchens couldn't make it to the bee retreat this year, as she's busy raising baby goats (and literally trying to keep them out of her hair!).  She aspires to use her geese in this stunner of a pattern called Bird Seed by Tula Pink:

 

Next year's challenge?  An individual quilt that somehow reflects each quilter's "membership number" in the bee.  I am the 5th member in the bee, so I'm already starting to think about what I will do - I've only got a year to go! Five, five, five!

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