My Millennium Quilt Journey

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In the late 1990s, there was much concern and speculation about the effects of the millennium on different systems, like utilities, banking, and anything having to do with computers. 看Dubbed the Y2K bug, here is a description from news articles at the time:
Even if you have a brand new PC, there's a good possibility it may not work correctly come January 1, 2000. And even if you don't own a PC, you could be in for some major trouble the morning after that turn-of-the-century party. In a nutshell, the Millennium Bug refers to computers that are unable to cope with the year 2000. It's estimated that over 90% of computers in use today are susceptible to this problem, which arises from the fact that many computers and software programs use only two digits to represent the year. Programmers chose this course of action to save precious memory and disk space in the early days of computing, but unfortunately this shortcut is still used in some software today. People use notation like 12/31/99 all the time, but what's a computer going to think when the date suddenly becomes 01/01/00? Some computers will think it's the year 1900, others will reset to 1980 or some other random date.
Every Macintosh computer ever built is Y2K compliant, capable of breezing through看 the millennium shift and all the way to December 31, 2019 without a hiccup. A scripting patch handles dates up to 6:28:15 A.M. on February 6, 2040. Well in advance of the year 2019, Apple will release a revised Date & Time control看 panel to support dates up to 29,940 A.D.
I think that will suffice for me and my Macintosh.
On the lighter side, quilters the world over were chatting over the internet, exchanging ideas and quilting designs. 看They were e-mailing, building web sites and using computers to design quilts. 看I don't remember when I first learned of people planning Example of signature block. to make quilts to mark the millennium. 看Initially, I wasn't interested in making one, but the more I heard about them and started seeing photos on web sites, the more Example of signature block. I began to think it would be a good idea to make one.
The process of making a millennium quilt began with collecting 2000 different fabrics from different people all over the world. 看The details usually included trading 25 different squares of fabric plus one square on which the sender wrote his/her name and address, sometimes adding a drawing or stamp symbolic of a hobby or home location. 看This signature Example of signature block. square was referred to as a 'siggy'. 看The squares were either 3" or 2 1/2". 看Some quilters included short biographies in addition to the fabrics. 看All of these items fit nicely in a legal sized envelope and usually weighed right on the borderline between one ounce and two. 看The cost of one ounce of US first class postage was $.33.
看These delightful little surprise Example of signature block. packages were called 'squishies'. 看I guess you have to be a fabriholic to appreciate how exciting it was to find a squishie in the mail! 看The first ones I received were upon returning from a week long vacation. 看The mail box was full of squishies. 看What a treat. 看It doesn't take much to make me happy.
I started without a real plan for my quilt. 看I hadn't even decided which size square to use, so I collected both sizes. 看I could always make two quilts, right?看 Every On the design wall in 1999. MQ photo I saw was made with either the 3" or the 2 1/2" blocks, not both in the same quilt. 看My first exchange occurred early April 1999 and the last exchange was in December 2000. 看Actually, all but the last exchange happened during 1999. 看The last exchange was for a straggler who needed Millennium quilt at 958 pieces. some more fabrics, so I exchanged with her. 看I also used my own fabrics. 看I didn't keep a running count of the squares. 看I just assumed I'd have more than enough.
I don't remember exactly when I started to piece the fabrics, except that it was in 1999. 看Somewhere along the way, I decided to incorporate both sizes of the squares into one quilt. 看I planned the first block, which would Millennium quilt at 1,060 pieces. be like a central medallion. 看I surrounded the medallion with rows of squares, then a row of stars, deciding on each row as I came to it. When I started this process, we were living at the 'camp' in Barataria, Louisiana, and planning to build a house there. 看I had a sewing room set up in a bedroom and happily sewed away.
看看We changed our minds(several times) about building Millennium quilt at 1,172 pieces. in Louisiana and then moved to Kingwood, TX. 看We rented an apartment while we built our dream house. 看While we were in the apartment, I set up a design wall and worked on the MQ and other projects. 看I had fewer that one thousand pieces sewn together when we moved to the house.
看 With all the activity surrounding moving into a new house, I wasn't in the mood to work on the quilt, so I put it away.  In the next two and a half years, I often thought about working on this quilt, but other projects always took Millennium quilt at 1,290 pieces. my interest.   In August 2003, I finally decided that I should put it off no longer.
Since I had started this seemingly huge undertaking, I had gained more skills in piecing and machine quilting.  I Millennium quilt at 1,347 pieces had also acquired a Juki.   It's a great machine for machine quilting because of it's speed and because it has more space under the arm than regular sewing machines.

Millenium quilt at 1477 pieces. 看Even though I didn't finish it for the millennium year, I still consider it my Millennium Quilt, because all the fabrics were from pre-2000. 看I even Millennium quilt at 1998 pieces. bought the backing at that time. 看I forgot to get a binding fabric specifically for this quilt, but I found a fabric I bought in the year 2000 which I could use. 看Even though I thought I bought more than enough of the backing fabric, I ran short, so I used the binding fabric to make up about four inches of the width at the bottom of the back of the quilt.
Backing fabric. Backing fabric. Machine quilting. Machine quilting. Machine quilting. Machine quilting. Machine quilting.

I finished the quilt on October 10, 2003.
Clara in sewing room.
Statistics:
First exchange mailed-April 5, 1999.
Last exchange mailed-December 2000.
Number of squishies mailed-88.
Number of squishies received-85.
Finished quilt-October 10, 2003
Finished size-82 x 107 inches.
Almost finished.
Exchanges were from:
Alberta, CA-1
Arkansas-1
Arizona-2
Australia-1
Austria-1
British Columbia, CA-1
California-6
Colorado-2
Connecticut-1
England-2
Florida-2
France-1
Georgia-1
 Germany-1
Hawaii-1
Idaho-1
Illinois-3
Indiana-2
看Iowa-1
Kansas-1
Kentucky-2
Louisiana-1
Massachusetts-3
Maryland-1
Maine-1
Michigan-2
Minnesota-1
 Missouri-1
Montana-2
North Carolina-3
Nebraska-1
New Hampshire-2
New Jersey-2 New Mexico-1
North Wales, UK-1
Norway-1
Nova Scotia, CA-1
Nevada-1
看New York-2
Ohio-2
Oklahoma-1
Ontario, CA-1
 Oregon-1
Pennsylvania-2
Rhode Island-1
Scotland-1
South Africa-1
Tennessee-2
Texas-5
Utah-1
Virginia-2
Vermont-1
Washington-1
Wisconsin-4
West Virginia-1

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