Millenium Quilt Swap - Y2K

Good morning my Quilty Friends.
Todays post is about the Millenium Quilt or Y2K Swap.

Do you remember back in 1999, when we were all so excited about reaching our 2000th year.
There was much speculation about it’s effects on the world in general and computer systems in particular.
There was a school of thought that felt many computer systems would be unable to cope with the change from 1999 to 2000.
Well, happily we reach the end of 1999 and burst into 2000 without a hitch. Happy days.
Anyways, over the weekend I was taking my ‘Millenium quilt’ off my bed and thought, um…..my quilty friends might like to know about this.
Back in the day, before laptops, tabs and very cleaver mobile phones. I was sat (as many of us did back then) in the little bedroom where our computer was housed, wandering slowly (dail up) thru the web when I came across something called the Y2K swap.
Basically you put your email address and where you were from onto the Y2K website to join in with the swap. Once you were on the swap list you could either email others on the list or others would email you asking you to swap with them.
In fact this is when I got my first email address. I’d been using my hubby’s. But realised I’d need my own doing this swap. And so that’s when I became Joy.wales – I wanted other swappers to easily see where I was from.
The idea was to swap 2000 either two and a half inch or three inch squares (I chose the three inch swap) so you could make a Millenium quilt containing said 2000 squares.

Each swap was for 25 squares, so you needed to swap with 80 people to get your 2000 squares – with me so far…….
Yes, good.
I didn’t have to contact many people at all. I was inundated with requests.
What I didn’t realize when I started was there were very few people in Wales UK doing the swap. And lots of swappers were looking for one swap from each country. With many  Americans wanting one swap from each of the American States and then spreading out into the rest of the world.
Within a short time I had my 80 swaps.
BUT
I received so many more emails begging me to swap with them as they couldn’t find another Welsh swap.  I felt so sorry for them that I started a second time.
So I ended up with over 4000 squares – I couldn’t turn anyone away which is why I ended up with a little over 4000.
This was a very exciting time. As the ‘squishies’ as they were called started dropping through my letter box.
Each squishy was a small envelope with 25 different squares of fabric inside along with a siggie which was a square with the swappers signature on.

And also a bio, which was a page of information about the swapper.
It was wonderful to learn about the swappers lives, and I put the bios in  files to go with each quilt.

Of course this also meant that I had to cut sort and mail 4000 squares myself – a job which kept me out of mischief for quite some time.

I ended up making my own Millenium quilt with 2000 squares in.

Two Millenium quilts with 1000 squares in each – one for my daughter and one for my son.

And with the odds left over I made three throw sized quilts for my two sisters and my brother so we all had a Millenium Quilt.

There were times when I wished I had never started the swap – but I am so glad I did it now.

In the summer when it is hot we use my Millenium quilt on the bed with just a sheet. It’s lovely and cool.
And if you lift the quilt up when it’s on the bed in summer you can see the colours showing thru at the back of the quilt. It always reminds me of a stain glass window from the back.

And in the winter when it is at it’s coldest my Millenium quilt sits on top of our bed quilt for extra warmth.
I absolutely love my Millenium Quilt and intend to use it until it falls apart at the seams.
It hardly seems possible it was 13 years ago. And of course over time some of the ‘siggys’ signature squares have faded considerably, but that just adds to it's charm I think.

2020 Repairs

By 2020 My Millenium Quilt was showing signs of it age. Some of the Patches were becoming rather Threadbare. So I decided to make some Fabric Hearts to cover this.

Update May 2025

My Stitching May 2025  

Well it's now 2025 and My Much Loved Millenium Quilt is 25 years old is due for it's second round of repairs. 

 

Have a great weekend

Check out my other Social Media Links

,

Yours in stitches, Joy

Daisy stitches – Kickback Friday

Well my Quilty Friends, it's still hot, hot, hot in Wales.

So I was up, dressed and down the beach nice and early this morning before the day had a chance to heat up.

And it was glorious down there this morning.

I wanted to introduce Daisy to the beach.

At first she was afraid.

She was pretrified

And after ten minutes of trying, I had to pick her up and carry her onto the beach.

At first she stuck by me like glue.
But then she thought the wet sand was pretty cool to lay in.

What, me roll around in the wet sand.

No it wasn't me - I'm not sure I like the beach.

Stay with me this does involve stitching - eventually.

Now she's getting into it - ears all akimbo -

She looks a bit like a gremlin - maybe that's what happens to her for ten minutes every evening when she goes wild. Um.. must remember not to get her wet.

Ah yes, this is the life - just call me
Daisy Digger or Digger Daisy










Using camera timer now - quick Daisy, we have 10 seconds to strike a pose.
The eagle eyed among you may have noticed the railings in the sand. - yes the sand has completely covered the steps and most of the railings too!

After her first visit to the beach this morning Daisy has spent the rest of the day like this - with occasional re-positioning for comfort.

I think it's what you call 'Dog Tired'.

Here are some shells we collected this morning for future inspiration.

And finally, here comes the stitching bit.
Do you remember in my last post I showed you my work in progress.

Well, here it is all finished, except for the edging - not sure what I'm going to do there.
Any suggestions?

Above the original picture with my interpratation.

And this is a close up of Daisy all finished.

I'm absolutely thrilled with it - I had a few wobbles along the way, wasn't sure it was going to turn out how I envisaged it.
But the finished piece is just how I wanted it to look. Yippy!

Might try another one soon - watch this space....

Meanwhile, you might enjoy browsing my other Social Media Links

So, that's it from me today,

Yours in Stitches, Joy

Getting the paints out - Monday Group

Well my Quilty Friends as this hot weather continues here in Wales my stitching has almost ground to a halt.

It's just too hot to be indoors sewing. So it's hand stitching in the garden for me.

Mind you even that's not easy with Daisy (my new puppy) wanting to help all the time.

Once the weather cools down the and normal sewing resumes, the next part on my log cabin is the binding.

Meanwhile,
 I'm going to show you a little piece I'm currently working on.

As a backdrop to this story. Me and a few of my quilty friends have recently joined the Contemporary Section of the Quilters Guild of the British Isles.

I've been a 'Guild' member for years, but this May decided to join the Contemporary Section.

Well, we all went to a Guild Area Day last month and the speaker was Gillian Travis. She is also a member of the Contemporary section. And she was showing amongst other things, some of the pieces she had made for the Contemporary challenge this year, Journal Quilts.

We would have like to join in, with the Journal Quilts challenge, but as we joined in May we were too late to join in this challenge.

 So between us we devised a quilty plan.

We would have our own little contemporary challenge. We choose memories of each month, so our first month would be Memories of June which we would each have to bring along and show at our monthly Swansea Quilters meeting.

Sew, this is mine, a work in progress at the moment. But it has to be finished for Saturday so I'd better get a move on.  

 I have chosen a picture of Daisy take just a few days after we had her.

I took lots of photos that day and as she raced around the house and garden,

most of my pictures were of a blur of black, a black tail or even some with no Daisy in at all.

This was one of my better ones - she's almost all in it - it's just her head disappeared as I took the photo.

Anyways, I had the photo printed out. Then I took a piece of thinish calico, laid it on the top of the photo

the simply traced the outlines of the photo onto the calico.

Next - very brave of me

I got out some of the fabric paints I'd bought over the last few years.

You know,

The kind of quilty thing you buy intending to try straight away

Which then sits in a draw for the foreseeable future

mainly due to your being too scared/not having the confidence to try whatever it is out.

Sew

Feeling enthused and fearless after Gillian Travis talk - 'just do it' she said.

'Use these little quilts to try out different ideas', she said

'Don't procrastinate', she said  

SEW

I got out my paints, sat out the garden and painted the photo  

And you can see the result in the picture above, above the actual picture.

And I'm very pleased with it for a first attempt.

Now even I can see that the wall is a bit wonky

That's where I didn't follow the lines and added some of my own

Leason learnt there.

This picture has some machine stitching on it.

You can probably make out the stands of cotton that need to be cut off

These are from where I've 'jumped' from one section of stitching to another.

Next I plan to start hand stitching Daisy in.

It's no masterpiece - but I'm quite thrilled with my first attempt

I particularly like the cartoon feel to it - it wasn't something I was aiming for but I like it.

Well that's me done for today,

remember you can click on the 'pink links' to find out more. 

Speak to you all again soon,

Yours in Stitches, Joy 

Win's 100 year old Welsh Quilt

Win's 100 Year Old Welsh Quilt

In actual class today our most Senior Member, Win, brought in one of her mothers quilts. Obviously being in Wales this is a Welsh Quilt.  It is about 100 years old.

Above, Win with her mum's Welsh Quilt

Below showing both sides of the quilt.

The plain side shows off the quilting beautifully

While the patterned side has some wonderfully colourful flowers on it.

 Above and below are close-ups of the lovely quilting patterns.

I was tempted to record her telling the story behind the quilt. But she was half way through when I thought of it and I didn’t like to ask her to start again.

Anyways. As I said this quilt belonged to Win’s mother. And in typical Welsh fashion, the quilt was made by the village quilter/sewing lady.
Win was brought up on a farm. And sadly her mother died when Win was very young.  But she knows the story of her mums quilts very well.

I’ll try and tell you the story as best I can.
This story is set in Pontrhydyfen in South Wales in the U.K.  One thing they had plenty of on the farm was sheep – no surprise there – if you come to Wales – your gonna see sheep.

And after sheering, their wool was taken to a wollen mill in Neath Abbey where Win’s mum would insist that   A, the wool she took in was used for her blankets (she insisted that her wool was of the best quality and very clean going in and she didn’t want anyone elses wool in her blankets) and B, that only the best, most skillful girls worked on her wool to make her blankets. 

Win has previously brought in one of her mothers blankets which had a beautiful woven design.
However, they also got plain white blankets and these were used as the ‘wadding’ in their quilts.

I have been teasing Win, that her family must have been well off to afford a Wholeclothquilt – and when I heard the wadding was a brand new blanket – they must have been very rich indeed! As the more lowly people would have used old bankets, wornout clothes, an old worn out quilt, or even paper,  as their quilt wadding. But Win assures me that they were not rich – they just had lots of wool.

We then had a discussion about how the quiltmaker may have been paid. I thought maybe a barter system – with woolen blankets as payment  - but who knows.
Anyway this quilt was kept for best (Doctors visits etc).  Which is why it has survived all this time in such a good condition.

We marveled at the quilting designs used and sat and stroked the quilt for ages. I just love, love, love the texture that quilting makes on fabric.
We noticed that the valance had been stitched on by machine. And thought most probably at the time the quiltmaker would have been the only person in the village to own such a modern invention.

 Above the central Medallion pattern 

such a tradition feature in a Welsh Quilt

 Above is a laughing Win

and below is

a concentrating Win.

So, can I say thank you, thank you, thank you Win for bringing your quilt in to share with us all today.

And of course I must mention that Win herself has made many a beautiful quilt over the years.

Monday Group - Marbling

Today we had a complete change in class and played with the Marbling Kit we bought in the Quilt Show in Malvern last month.

We used a pipett to drop in our  paints, and a cocktail stick and a makeshift ‘afro’ comb made out of cocktail sticks and selotape to ‘marble’ the paints.

Here are some of the finished pieces.


I then took them home to line dry them.
Look – blue skies – summer has hit Port Talbot.

We had a wonderful morning with comments such as:

I wouldn't think of doing this at home. But I've enjoyed playing with the paints here. (All set up and ready for them).
Can we do this again please?
and
Can we paint on shells next time?

The swirling the paints with the cocktail stitcks was by far their favourite part - seeing what patterns emerged from the paints.

So it looks like we will have to go to the beach to find some shells then!

Above is a video of Chris 'having a go' this morning.

Spotlight Wednesday - Pulling up your bobbin thread

This weeks Spotlight Wednesday is about pulling up you bobbin thread to the top of your work.

It's not something we've need to use yet. But I thought I show it to you ready for when you do.

This is a little technique you can use whenever you want to start your machine stitching not at the edge of your work.

I learnt this when doing machine applique but it's just as useful for machine quilting.

Sew,
if I wanted to start my machine quilting on the beige strip of the logcabin below

This is what I would do
Click on this pink link to watch my video - pulling up your bobbin thread.

So now your work will 'always' be as tidy on the back as it is on the front.

I'm going to go and get my things ready for tomorrow now.

Goody list - money -  camera -  glasses -  sweets and drinks - painkillers - a bus full of quilty friends and a large dose of laughter at the ready.

My D.H. says that when us quilters get together we sound like a gaggle of geese!

We are going (a bus full so probably 50 of us) to the Quilt Show in Malvern - we'll be crossing the border into the English countryside and the land of free bags - you have to pay for grocery bags in Wales and we Welsh get a bit overexcited at the prospect of having our purchases put into free bags.

I'll be taking pictures, making notes, having more than my fair share of fun, and reporting back to you all on Kickback Friday.

Yours in Stitches, Joy

Monday Group – Machine Quilting

Good Monday morning quilty friends.
Today I’m going to talk about machine quilting using your Walking Foot.

Last week I put together my Half Logcabin quilt top, and now it’s time to quilt it.

Sew, let’s talk about quilting.

As I said, I’m machine quilting this quilt. I’ll be using straight line quilting, some what I call ‘three step zig-zag stitch quilting’ and just a little machine decorative stitch quilting.

Let’s take a look at some examples:

This first one is machine quilted in the ditch. You can’t really notice the quilting.

This second logcabin block is machine quilted using a zig zag stitch – so the quilting stands out.

   This flower is straight line quilted diagonally.

Below, I’ve used straight line quilting either side of the ‘free motion’ quilted leaves.
  And finally this block has been ‘crosshatch’ quilted with additional vertical lines.

Now don’t worry if I’ve used some quilting terms your not familiar with. I’ll be showing you each one in more detail over the next few weeks.

I just wanted to give you a taster of what you can do with ‘straight line’ machine quilting.

And now for something completely (well slightly) different.
In todays video I’ll show you how I get ready for straight line machine quilting.

Hope you enjoy,

That's all from me today folks,

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Yours in Stitches, Joy