That escalated quickly

Another month, another bee block. Last month I was queen bee and I've started getting blocks in the mail from my teammates. What fun! The September queen bee picked a nifty block called Jagged Little Pill. It's fast and easy to put together. I made a practice block first before moving onto the real deal.

Instead of the usual charm squares I've been sending each month, I cut rectangles the queen can use to make more blocks. As usual, I included a signature block and fabric basket.

Then, perhaps in a moment of craziness, I decided to host my own swap! Thankfully I was smart enough to recruit some help with the endeavour, the very sweet Anita of Daydreams of Quilts. I had a simple idea based on my love of swaps and sending cards. I imagined there would be groups of about 20 and you'd make a Polaroid quilt block for everyone on your team and slip each one into a pretty greeting card with a nice handwritten note. Then you'd get months of happy mail from all over the world, and enough blocks to make a mini quilt or pillow! I called it #polaroidgreetingswap.

I had no idea how many people would be interested in joining when Anita and I posted about it on Instagram. We planned to have sign-ups open for a week, but within just one day 240 signed up! Wow! To keep things manageable, we decided to close the sign-ups early. But that also meant I could get started on assigning groups early, and those emails are going out with the help of my swap mamas. This swap is just getting started but already I've learned so much and had several hurdles, like Google flagging me as a spammer for the flurry of emails sent out from a new account.

It's so fun though to see so many people super excited about my idea. I can't wait to see how this turns out! Already there are calls for a second round!