Y2K (a quilt story continues)

Piece by Piece

My latest obsession started about 3 am Sunday morning.*

I decided to pull out the package of Y2K blocks & Squishies and lay them out all over the kitchen floor and see what kind of plan I had.
I must have had a plan?

I'll admit to having a mild panic attack at the though of what lay ahead.
Literally my knees were shaky and my heart was racing in an "I can't do this" kind of way. In a way I don't ever remember before.

Come to think of it maybe I was coming down with something. I spent ALL day Monday sick in bed, nauseous and achy,1st hot and then cold. I requested a shovel to the back the head at one point. Er...thankfully he didn't take me up on that. BUT I did get a good hour of work done on the quilt before admitting defeat. And who the hell dirtied all those dishes? I made sure all the dishes were done before allowing myself to start my Millenium Project on Sunday. And all I cooked was toast for 24 hours. Every freaking dish in the house was dirty by Tuesday?

The thought of shoving it back in the Treasure Box and pretending it didn't exist for another ten years flashed briefly across my mind.
Instead I took a coffee break and joined a Ravelry Knitters Who (used to) Quilt group. My first post:

(SOS! :)
My name is Laurie and I have some UFOs…is that the way members of support groups start their pleas for help? lol

A few days ago I pulled my Treasure Box out, aka underbed storage container full of UFO’s, determined to do something about it. Closest to finished first seemed like a good plan so a quilt that just needed binding is underway - halfway around hand stitching binding down on back- waiting for sunny window later to finish.

So I thought my Y2K would be next. Now I’m having a panic attack! I seem to have 45 blocks sewn together, with 11 swaps still wrapped in the envelopes they came in; 4 signature squares floating around loose.
Sewn together Log cabin style light to dark diagonally… Clearly I had a plan. Once!!

Okay. Rather than stuff it back in the box for another 10 years, it’s waiting on the floor for me to calm down. Remember to breathe normally. Sign up for a support group. Perhaps I’ll blog!

LOL - husband just got up and noticed my cause of distress laid out on the floor. Shaking his head and going back to bed!

It was not a bad plan at all. I had sewn (at least) 45 blocks together, with squares reading dark to light on the diagonal in the style of the Log Cabin pattern. Only with little squares instead of strips.

I remember starting out trying to keep everyone's 24 pieces of fabric together with their signature square.

(A.) you don't always get a very good read of dark to light.
(B.) you get some ugly-arsed blocks.

There's one 12" block I may have to unsew just to get the signature square out. It's NOT going in.

I had swapped (25) 3 inch squares with at least a hundred quilters. As seems to be true of all internet swapping no matter the theme, there are always people who break their promise. Best Intentioned Swappers I can take to a point. They meant well, but stuff happened.
PLEASE: STOP SIGNING UP FOR STUFF UNTIL YOU GET CAUGHT UP!

There always seem to be a few who think they're signing up for free stuff from any idiot who will send it to them. (And I guess if you're silly enough to send strangers you meet on the internet stuff, you should probably count yourself lucky you ever get anything back.) But still we trust. Probably part of the reason this project lost its charm. If the objective was 2000 pieces, it would take 80 trustworthy swappers. I never did count how close I came until Wednesday.

I was (at least) 2 short. Too short...ha ha! corny joke just for Steph ;0)

I must have had more than 45 blocks sewn together to start with; as it is now I have nearly 72 squares. Clearly my math or basic counting skills need some work as I still have 5 or 6 signature squares left. Plus my own needs to go in! I used the fabrics I had cut into 3" squares for the cat quilt and i can't remember how I signed it. I remember using a rubber stamp print though!
A recount will take place today.

*Actually the obsession to finish something started 3 days before when I came across 2 old emails printed out and saved from 2001-2003 during an Internet Round Robin ...gone bad. A group of 6 or 7 of us each made a 12 inch crazy pieced block and we agreed to swap them to each person in turn, who would work on our block and then pass it to the next.

The last person to get my block was Gayla Cox. She sent me glowing details of the work she was doing in reply to several of my emails, trying to encourage her along and get my block back. For years I had faith I would get it back. She wrote how wonderful my block looked. All about the ladybugs and caterpillars she was embroidering. My name! She said she embroidered my name.

And then she kept it.

The girls said a blog post titled "You Better Be Dead" was unacceptable. Steph googled her. She might be. Rest in Peace...but I'm still a little bitter.
My name was on it.

To this day THAT is the only Internet Swap that rankles. That I obsess over still. I had blind faith until the end. (Well, sometimes still I think what it would be like if I found it in the mailbox. FYI: I still live at the same address.) But there was never closure. Even the hostess handled it poorly in my opinion as her only response was "oh, that's too bad."
No more Internet Round Robins for me.