Welcome To My Quilt

My Quilting Bee Quilt

For nostalgic reasons, I'm re-creating my quilt by stitching together patches from former bees that are still preserved on the internet, along with my own creations, free*bee patches, and awards that I vaguely remember winning. I made myself Bee #22 since I can neither remember nor find my original bee number.

This is a fun little side project for me and a work in progress. You might want to check back occasionally to see my quilt slowly grow.

Trade Log

Joined: Early 2000s
Trade Count: A lot!
Trades This Month: 0
Latest: Maybe it's you?
Pending Trades: 0
Quilt Washed: 08 January 2025

Trade With Me

I'm an official Quilting Bee member! If you are also a member and would like to trade patches, please fill out the form below. Don't forget to include this information: your patch, your membership # and your URL. If you're not a member, please click the first patch on my quilt for info on how to join!

About Me

Fritzi Hi there, my name is Fritzi and I'm a busy bee from here, there and everywhere. I like to create bee*utiful things in my spare time for both my actual and virtual honeycomb. I also enjoy writing, bumbling through nature and playing the guitar. Stripes are my favourite because they suit me so well (I like the black ones best). I have honey-coloured hair and I prefer to let it flow in the wind - you won't catch me teasing it into a beehive. I like Italian food, bread and potatoes. I do have a sweet tooth - but I don't like honey. Please, don't tell the other bees; it's embarrassing. I like listening to rock music, and my favourite band are The Bee*tles. Their tunes give me a real buzz. I'm especially fond of their bee-friendly songs, like A Taste of Honey, Honey Pie, Wild Honey Pie and their cover version of Honey Don't.

Credits

The idea for re-creating my own Quilting Bee website came to me after stumbling upon LostLetter's q*bee shrine. It's a lovely reminiscence of the best pixel club on the Internet with lots of preserved patches and graphics. Pay Lost a visit!

All info regarding The Quilting Bee I took from the official site, which is partly archived on the Internet Archive with 286 captures between 6^th April 2005 and 27^th January 2022.

Graphics

All graphics on this page - except for my own patches and enhancements - were made by staff & members of The Quilting Bee. Both LostLetter's q*bee shrine as well as Bubs #77 archived Bee-Utiful Quilt were a great starting point to collect patches and other pixel art.

Layout

This layout was a pre-made layout that approved members could use for their quilt and was originally made by Bubs #77. I modified the header image as I added a navigation menu and a few extra animated pixels to make it more bee*utiful. I was surprised that the HTML and CSS still worked perfectly fine, especially Bubs' #77 superb code for the trading form - nonetheless I updated everything to HTML5 and CSS3 standards. I didn't do anything fancy though; I limited myself to what was stylistically possible (for me) back then, which meant especially not using custom fonts. For convenience though I use flex boxes for the layout structure and displaying the patches on my quilt.

I only use two scripts on this website, one for prettier tooltips and one for sending the trading form data to my Google Form - both are stitched together by me.

Also, the whole q*bee site is just a single html file. I use CSS to toggle content visibility based on the URL fragment, without requiring JavaScript. Here is how it works: Initially, only the home content is visible by setting #home { display: block; } - .subpage { display: none; } hides all elements with the class subpage by default. Now, when you click through the navigation, .subpage:target { display: block; } shows the targeted subpage when its ID matches the URL fragment and .subpage:target~#home { display: none; } hides the home element when any subpage is targeted. To make this work though, the <div id="home"> has to come last in the document.

Isn't that nifty? I think that's pretty neat!

The Quilting Bee was an interactive online pixel club and friendship clique with members of all ages from all over the world. The Quilting Bee originated in February 2000; the brain child of Gurubii. This is her original about text for the club:

It all started on Feb 18 2000 when I was viewing a slander of me on someones site. I was reading in and when i got to the bottom it said ...I pity her, with shame and her quilt. I thought to myself where does this quilt come into play? then I was inspired to make a club to connect REAL friends and nice people all together by doing none other than building an internet quilt! this is a club, you join, get your name on the members list, and make new friends! Each time you make a friend you exchange your patches and sew them onto your quilt! Soon your quilt will be big and beautiful and colorful!

The club grew very quickly, soon expanding to several hundred members thus becoming too much for Guruubii to handle so the club. The club was passed on to various people, was shut down and re-opened. Eventually in 2005, Kimberly stepped up and took over The Quilting Bee, giving it a new home - it's own domain - and proper hosting. After a year of running it alone, Nicole was appointed Queen bee to help out Kimberly but even then, Kimberly had to give up the club to take care of her growing family and passed it on to Jem #123.

To thank Kimberly for everything she had done, a quilt was created and presented to her in June 2006. The patches and gifts were done by club members to let her know how much everybody appreciated her hard work, and how much she would be missed in the days to come.

Kimberly, the members of The Quilting Bee wanted to take a few moments to say a big THANK YOU for all of the hard work that you have put into the club during the last year and a half that you served as Queen. Your influence on and contributions to this club have been noticed, and your time as Queen has really had a significant impact on the lives of many members. You made the #200 a special one, and you made the q*bee a special place to be as well. You put so much of yourself into creating fun activities, hosting special events, and encouraging new pixellers to hone their skills. For those things, and many others, we are truly thankful.
You were often the one who reminded us that this club was built first on friendship, and then on pixel art. You never let us forget that we could do better... both with our artwork, but also with our relationships. We hope that you know how much you meant to us, not only as a leader, but also as a friend.

The Quilting Bee shut down in Spring 2014 and maintained a Facebook group for a while. The website was temporarily revamped on 30^th January 2020 to celebrate the Quilting Bee's 20^th birthday.

My Time As A Bee

I joined The Quilting Bee in the early 2000s, just after I built my very first website. Unfortunately, I can't remember either my bee name or my bee number - I just used too many different aliases throughout my years being online.
What I do remember though is the fun that community brought on. LiveJournal and DragonLance message boards aside, this was my favourite place to be on the internet.

I never considered myself a talented pixeller but I also never felt that I didn't belong. On the contrary, seeing all the other creative bees inspired me to hone my own skills. And what's more, The Quilting Bee's quite strict rules about making your quilt tidy, organized, and generally just better designed overall played a big part in me learning HTML, CSS and PHP. I especially loved all those tiny organiser graphics and myQuiltAdmin - a management script for fellow bees - developed by Bubs #77 with add-ons by Jem #123 and Gaby #212 and I invested hours to make my website and my quilt pretty.

The Quilting Bee wasn't an exclusive clique but the the entry bar was higher than in other places back then and definitely higher than it is with the online spaces I frequent today. In hindsight, this was a good thing because it lead to the q*bee being a very active, creative, talented and friendly community for quite some time.

Rules for the Beehive

To give you an idea of how The Quilting Bee worked, I gathered excerpts from the official rules, FAQs and tips for New*bees below.

Rules

We have to have rules to keep the club running smoooooth :9 Rest assured they're all easy to follow...

Trading with Bees

When you want to trade patches with someone, you do so by sending them a polite e-mail or by filling in a form on their quilt.

If you're sending an e-mail, you should include these three things: your patch (attached), your membership #, and your URL (that way, the person you are trading with will know where to link your patch to).

You may only trade with official Quilting Bee members. You can tell if someone is an official member because they will have a membership patch with their own unique member #.

Please do not take other member's patches until they have been given to you. If you mail someone your patch, you should wait until they have replied to your trade request before you add their patch to your quilt. Likewise, if you want to trade with somebody who has contacted you please let them know: don't just take their patch and expect them to check your quilt!

2 patch trades per day maximum! What fun is it if you get everyone's patches right away, and there are none left to collect? Take your time, and have fun collecting. :) This rule does not apply to activities in which you can trade submissions; there is no limit on trades for these.

Please be an active bee. The more often you trade with other members, the more fun the club will be for everyone. Bees must trade a minimum of twice per month to stay in the club.

About Your Quilt Patch

You may only have one patch for trading. If you get bored with it and want to redesign it, you may do so at any time.

Patches must be 40 x 40 pixels: no more, no less!

Patches must be in GIF or PNG format with no animation.

Your patch must have some sort of stitching around the edges (no solid borders). This means that there must be some sort of transparent stitching on your patch.

Your Quilt Page(s)

You must keep the Quilting Bee patch (linked to the quilting bee) and your own personal quilt patch as the first two patches on your quilt. When you receive your membership patch, this will be the third patch on your quilt (see sample below). How you arrange the rest of your patches is up to you. :)

You should leave the Quilting Bee text on your quilt page (see sample below). You can modify this text if you like, but make sure that a) people know where to contact you for a trade & b) people know where to click (ie. the first patch) if they want to join.
I'm an official Quilting Bee member! If you are also a member and would like to trade patches, please email me. Don't forget to include this information: your patch, your membership # and your URL. If you're not a member, please click the first patch on my quilt for info on how to join!

Please do not put right click disable scripts on your quilt page. Sometimes we have contests and activities (like Bee of the Week) where we will need to right click to save your patch.

Your quilt page must be easy for us to find. It should be no more than 3 clicks away from your main index page with a clearly marked link or bee button.

If your quilt opens in an itty-bitty pop-up window or an iframe please make sure that the window/iframe is big enough to hold it.

Upload received patches to your own server. Do not direct link them. Direct linking leads to quilts full of holes, and nobody wants a moth-eaten quilt.

Collected patches should be linked to the bee's website. Be sure to use border="0" (or in your stylesheet: img {border: 0;}) when you link, and if your quilt is inside frames or a pop-up window, be sure to use a target="_blank" on each link.

Your Website

You must update your main website at least once every two months.

You must have an original layout made by you up when you apply to join: this tells us that you have the skill to maintain your quilt. If you use a complex content management system like WordPress and have difficulty creating your own theme, please customise a free theme as much as possible or make your quilt a detailed custom layout. We do not accept bees who use basic free templates for both their layout and quilts.

Current members are allowed to use a free theme or template once they're accepted.

You must keep a decent about me page up so that bees can get to know you. That means some paragraphs of text, not just boring lists and memes!

Frequently Asked Questions

Will you e-mail me if my site is rejected?

If we like your site but there's just a small problem, like a broken image or a problem with your quilt, yes, we'll write to tell you what needs to be fixed before we can accept you. But if your site doesn't meet the requirements because of major reasons then we likely won't.

Why don't you let everyone in?

With the number of submissions that we receive, if we let every single person in, the bee would have thousands of members by now and it would be totally unmanageable. By being selective, we hope to keep the q*bee a bit more intimate and in doing so, maintainable and fun to click around through. Remember that if your submission is rejected, it doesn't mean that your site is BAD, it just means that it's not up to our standards, so please don't take it personally or get upset by it. Who cares what we think anyway? :P

Why was I rejected?

Bees are generally rejected for the following common reasons:

Not enough personal info. - we expect more than a paragraph and a list.

Unoriginal graphics/pixels - we don't accept stealers in the q*bee.

Firefox incompatibility - we don't expect perfection, but readable text is helpful.

Missing official patch - you must have the official patch as the first on your quilt.

Failure to read the rules - we can tell, so you might as well. :)

My name was on the member's list, but now it's not! What happened?

If your name has been unlinked or removed from the member list, don't panic! :) We work extremely hard (the queen/worker bees) to keep the member list as current & up to date as possible. What this means is that we remove inactive members, sites that have disappeared, etc. We don't do this to be mean, we do this to try to keep things organized. All bees are sent warnings if we spot problems, but if you think you've been removed in error please contact us.

Tips for New*bees

After being approved to the Quilting Bee, you'll probably want to spruce up your quilt a bit. This guide will give you tips as to how to make your quilt tidy, organized, and generally just better designed overall. The suggestions are exactly that - suggestions. This is by no means the only way to create and design your quilt. The Quilting Bee encourages creativity on your quilt pages. The guide below outlines how you might want to go about creating your quilt. There are also some other neat things you can add to your quilt to make your Quilting Bee experience even better!

Quilt Creation/Design

Quilting Bee members display their quilts in many different ways. These range from using popup windows to full page quilts. The possibilities are near endless. Some things you want to ask yourself when designing your quilt are:

Is my quilt going to be able to be updated easily?

Does my quilt reflect my personality?

Is my quilt easy to navigate?

Is my quilt clearly linked from my website?

Be as creative with your quilt as you want to be. Make it look like an actual quilt. Make it match your website and/or patch. Make it totally random. The choice is yours. There are special awards you can win for creative and cozy quilts. Be sure to take the time to make your quilt special and look the way you want it to. Have a look at quilts of other members to get ideas. Of course, you could always use a starter template or premade quilt layouts as a base (found on our downloads page).

Quilt Contents and Organization

Some bees prefer to have smaller quilts with few pages. Others like to have everything included. As a Newbee, you might not need as many pages right away. Here are some common links included on quilt pages along with a description of what might be included on each page.

Main Page (Home): This is what bees will see first when visiting your quilt. It should include your name, member #, your patch and the official Quilting Bee patch. Some members also include their special member id patch. Typically your main page should also include the date of your last trade and who you traded with as well as a link to The Quilting Bee so people who aren't members yet can check it out. Other things you might consider adding: number of patches on your quilt, number of freebee patches and your contact information (form or email). Some bees even display their actual quilt on their main page.

Your Quilt: If you choose not to have your quilt on your main page, you will need to put it in a separate place. Some bees choose to call this link Members or Bees. The most obvious name for it is simply Quilt or My Quilt. Place the patches of bees you have traded with on your quilt. You may also choose to include another quilt on your page: a miscellaneous quilt or quilt about you. This would consist of free*bee patches you can collect to let others know about your interests, hobbies, etc. This quilt could also include any awards you win or staff positions you may hold.

About Me/Miscellaneous: You should have a section of your quilt that gives fellow bees a better idea of who you are. You might want to include where you live, your birthday, your hobbies and interests, etc. You also might choose to include a miscellaneous or about you mini-quilt.

Special/Gifts/Awards: On this page you could include any special patches that other members have given you such as thank you for trading patches, any awards you might win, or any gifts you receive. You could also separate these into different pages.

Activities: The Quilting Bee has fun activities and contests you can enter. Most of the activities require you create a patch or something else and trade it with others. There are also activities where you have to find and collect things. You will want to keep these patches in a special place on your quilt so others can easily find them. You can include all of your activity contents on one page or separate them into their own pages. A lot of bees use mini-patches to link to their activity pages.

Trade: On your trade page, you will want to include either a form, or an email address members can use to contact you. I'd suggest including both on your trade page. Sometimes forms don't work or vice versa, so it's nice to give members another way of contacting you.

Donations: Did you know that you can create and submit free*bee patches and other graphics? Well, you can! After making your first donation, you will receive a special mushroom by your name in the members list as well as a special patch. You might wish to include a page on your quilt that displays all of the graphic donations you have submitted to The Quilting Bee.

Retired/Dead/Graveyard: Some bees use this in different ways. Retired could mean retired bees who are no longer members, old patches of members who have changed their patch, or both. Dead/Graveyard would mean patches of bees that are no longer a member of the club. Some members also include their own retired patches on this page.

Trade Log/Log: You will have a workerbee assigned to you after becoming a member. Your workerbee will visit your site twice a month to make sure you are being an active bee and keeping your website and quilt updated. To make this easier for your Workerbee, have a trade log displaying the dates and names of bees you have traded with. This will make your Workerbee very happy!

Cleaning/Washing Your Quilt

Every so often you will want to clean or wash your quilt. This means different things to different bees, but the general idea is that you check to make sure your quilt is free of dead links and/or that the bees you have traded with still have your patch still displayed on their quilt.

Some bees like to remove the patches of retired bees and store them on a separate page). You do not have to remove patches of retired bees from your quilt. However, many bees do remove them to keep their quilt as up-to-date as possible and only include current members.

I'd suggest cleaning your quilt once a month. There is a very simple way to do this. If you join the BBS, at the beginning of each month the Queen Bee will post which members have retired. Alternatively, use the retired bee list to check your quilt. It's fast and simple.