So at my guild this month, we played fabric bingo. It's a great idea, and I'll post pictures of my bingo "cards" so you can see what I'm talking about. We made 25-patches with the columns being colors: yellow, red, purple/pink, blue, green. Then within each color, we used fabrics to represent about 30 different categories; for example, novelty, 30's print, paisley, plaid, heart, star, stripe, solid, metallic, holiday, dot, etc. I think you get the idea. Then we used buttons to mark our spaces. The center space on the card was a free space, and filled in with black fabric.

So when we played the game, the caller would call out blue dot, or red heart, or yellow plaid, or green metallic, and we would fill in the spots with our buttons until someone had bingo. Then, after making certain they had all the fabrics marked and called correctly, the winner claimed a prize.

So as we're playing along, people at the same table kept winning time after time after time. It was way more than coincidence. Nobody else was winning anything--just these same women. Eventually, I figured out that they were just calling their fabrics whatever they wanted. So a floral might be a leaf, or a dot (if it had a dot on it anywhere), or it might be a geometric if the flower wasn't exactly realistic. In other words, any one square could be a half a dozen different things. And when they went through to check it, sometimes they couldn't even remember what they had called something. So the winner might say "red leaf," and the caller would say, "No, I didn't call red leaf."

And the person would say, "Oh, how about red floral."

"No?"

"Hm, Red holiday?" And on like this until they hit on the right square. So it turns out that they were cheating!!! Can you believe that?

Once I figured this out it started bugging me when the same women would claim one, two, three, four, or more prizes during the evening while the rest of us sat idle.

Eventually one of these women came over to our table and said, "I'm going to teach you ladies how to play bingo." And I said, "I wrote on the back of my fabrics what they were so there would be no mistake and I would know what I intended each square to be."

And she replied, "Oh we just play to get acquainted and to have fun."

And I said, "Well, it's not much fun when the same people win all the time." Further, they sit together all of the time each month, so there was no "getting acquainted" about it. Sheesh.

It was ridiculous. What's the use of playing a game with no rules? And if there are no rules, doesn't it make sense to tell everyone there are no rules so that we're all on the same, uh, card?

I'm still kind of miffed about it. It's just a dumb game, and maybe I'm being petty, but this is just one more reason I don't like my guild. There are a lot of things I like, and that's why I keep going, but the people are not one of them.

By the way, we donated our fabric bingo cards at the end of the evening and they'll be made into charity quilts. It's a good idea. Too bad these women had to spoil it for everyone else with their cheating ways.

Maybe you could post a "key" on each table next time, with a sample of each fabric and it's name.

Who would ever have thought????

I would have been just plain POd about the whole thing.

Well, see this is kind of what I did on my card because one fabric might pass for two different things. I wanted to be consistent. But everyone was playing with a different card, and so none of them were the same.

Well, the game sounds cute. It is a shame some of the "ladies" had to cheat. I would have been very upset.

We tried Quilt Bingo at our guild. It was like what you said. Many of the members used the wrong fabric for the wrong spot. They didn't mean to cheat it was just too confusing for them. We spent more time trying to get everyone to understand then it was worth. The ones that did do it right were getting frustrated with the ones that couldn't understand. We decided not to do quilt bingo anymore.

It can only take a few to spoil it for everyone... I am sorry that such a fun game turned sour for everyone else :(

I would rather not play than do it the way we were doing it. I'm a pretty honest person, although I won't say I never tell any white lies. Everyone does that. If you don't, you won't have many friends; i.e., "Does this make me look fat?"

But I would be hard pressed to cheat in a game, and so I'm never going to be able to play by the rules these ladies were using. It would be better not to do it at all. I suppose if we were all playing with the same card, and a key was provided . . . but the way we did it, it wasn't fair to everyone playing.

Wonder if those ******* operate that way in all areas of their lives?

If one treats "friends" that way - - - -

sounded like alot of fun till the b*****s got hold of it.
put them at a table with all white squares next time!!!!
then see how HEY like it.
Raspberries to them from me