Quarter Two 3x6 Quilt Bee Saga

Wow, I can't believe it's been a month since my last post. I've actually been sewing quite a bit in the last month just slacking on the picture taking/blogging part. Hope to remedy that now. 

So I signed up for another quarter of the 3x6 Quilt Bee swap on Flicker. I missed getting signed up for paper-piecing so I signed up for a star block. 

I checked out one of those 'quilt block idea' books from the library. The one where they show you all these neat quilt block ideas and then let you figure out on your own how to accomplish it. 

Apparently I need some major work in that arena. I chose the block below: 

Love how it turned out, but it came in too small. The quilt blocks for the bee have to be 12 1/2" square and this one was under 12". So I tried a little math and came up with this one:

Too big. Like 14 or 15 inches. I literally started this darn think 6 different times. I'd get to a different part on each and realize my math was off. I couldn't get this dang thing to work for the life of me.
So time is running out and I decide to move on and try something else. Something someone else came up with.
Found this great website and this really awesome block, Jeri's Star.

Really lovely, but a little time-consuming and came out at 12" even, not 12 1/2". I was not even remotely interested in trying to make it 1/2" bigger. I'd had enough math that didn't work on the first block.
So the search began for another block. I bought a book at my local quilt shop and also checked out another book from my library. I combined elements from both books for a variety of far too complicated reasons and came up with my final design choice:

Made a total of 6 and frantically sent them off barely meeting the deadline.

I really need to stop being so flipping nit-picky about the design (and the fabric, good lord the fabric) I choose. My life would probably be so much simpler. Ah well. One project completed, several dozen left to go. :)