Monday, July 04, 2011

Happy Fourth of July! and Design Wall Monday

Wishing a safe and wonderful Independence Day to Yanks all over the world. A special thanks to those who serve and may be far from home on this holiday.

Design Wall Monday is here again, and this time I have something to show.  June’s UFO challenge was the Y2K quilt that I started….well, in Y2k.  It didn’t get very far, and I wasn’t happy with how it was going together. I gave it more thought, came up with a few more ideas and then, after all the wedding was over on the 18th, I began to work. Do any of you remember the great Y2K swap on the internet?  The idea was to get 2000 squares of fabric from all over the world. There were several sites online to contact other quilters that wanted to participate. Each quilter would send 25 squares of different fabrics plus a signature square to each person she exchanged with. If you exchanged with 80 other people, you would get your 2000 squares. If you exchanged with someone from each of the 50 US states and the 13 Canadian provinces and territories, you would already have 63 packets or 1575 squares. I exchanged with quilters all over the world, from Japan, Denmark, Mexico, Bahrain and many other places. Watching for the mail each day was exciting.

Anyway, this past month I began piecing each person’s squares into a 25 patch. My hope was to keep each persons contribution together.  As I put the blocks together I became fascinated by what the fabrics told me about each quilter. One gal either really liked sunflowers, or had recently made something requiring a selection of sunflower printsY2k design wall 002 and had lots left over.

  One person had a lot of tans in her stash,

Y2k design wall 004 another a lot of greens, yet another many fun, kid type animal prints, bold colors.

  Y2k design wall 003

One had many tiny floral prints in soft pastels.  Were these fabrics an example of what the quilter loved and had in her stash, or were these the things in her stash that she was ready to get rid of?

 Y2k design wall 006

Here are some of the first 48 blocks on my newly made (and not quite finished) design wall.

Y2k design wall 001

And some of the rows of five, pinned together for more squares.

Y2k design wall 008

Meanwhile, I finally mounted a quilt on my new quilt frame, did a little more than one row of quilting and the PCQ went kerflewy. I am now waiting for a chip to arrive and be installed before I can do any more quilting. It was going so well until then….*sigh*

Y2k design wall 009

5 comments:

Quilter Kathy said...

I love your Y2K project...each block is so interesting! Love how they look on the design wall.

Kate said...

Very cool project! It will certainly be something to remember Y2K with!

Jack said...

You know how much I understand about quilting...I just know that all the ones I've seen that you have made are beautiful.

I did want to respond to you by thank your two men for risking their lives to serve and protect this great country. And, you deserve our thanks, as well, for your sacrifice and worry on our behalf. Love you kiddo.

NEEDLE BENDER said...

Ah, life just happens when we are making other plans. Lovely patches--nice and straight stitching. I'm doing cruved piecing right now--not as much fun, but the end product will be good. Lovely daughter-in-laws.

Silverthimble said...

I loved the Y2K quilts that everyone was talking about on the Internet leading up to the year 2000. I love your idea of keeping everyone's squares together.