Can you remember..................

Can you remember the days before the Year 2000 when there was international concern about whether our computers were all going to crash and die at the turn of the century?

I was office manager for a government department in Sydney, Australia at the time and contingency plans were the item of the day just in case everything fell over.

In the end all was well and we were saved from a crisis that does not bear thinking about.

In the quilting world someone thought up this idea that it would be nice to do a swap so that participants ended up with 2,000 pieces of fabric to commemorate the Year 2000.

I participated in two of these swaps - one for 2.5 inch squares and the other for 3.5 squares.

Postmen in many countries must have been kept quite busy with little packages containing 20/30 pieces of quilting fabric as they circulated the world.

Most people sent some sort of fabric square to identify their set of blocks and I probably have enough of the these squares to make a quilt on their own.

It is now 2012 and these 4,000 squares of fabric have been patiently waiting for me to do something with them.  They even survived a relocation from Australia to New Zealand.  I left lots behind but not my Y2K squares.

                                                                                                                  
Yesterday I looked at my stash of squares once more and this time I took the plunge and started to make something with them.
I laid them out in rows and added a square of red to the end of each row.

Result - one granny square!

Just a very, very small beginning but I have over 20 little stacks made up to continue the process and so finally, finally I am starting to use some of my Y2K stash.

It has to be said that I could make a LOT of granny squares from the stash but at least I have made a start.

More Stitching

There seems to be no end to the possibilities of quilt projects from our stash of fabrics on hand.

A while ago I was given some fabrics from a range by Moda called Harvest Home.

The fabrics have been patiently waiting for my attention and now, finally, I have found a project for them.

This is just the beginnings of a quilt for me and the name of the block is Granny Squares.

It gives the appearance of having been worked with triangles but the trick is in the trimming of the blocks when they are completed.

Each block takes me about 40 minutes to complete but I am enjoying the process.  The variety of fabrics within the range gives me lots to play with so that each one looks different but has a common border to give uniformity.

Let's hope it won't be too long before I can share the finished quilt.