Sewing and Beyond with Mary Anne Ciccotelli

One Saturday in March 2000 (at the beginning of my quilting adventure), my husband Tom went to Washington, DC for the day. While he was gone, I started surfing the web. I entered “QUILTING” as my search. Little did I know that my quilting life would be changed forever! One project I found was: “Sunbonnet Sleuth’s Y2K Mystery with 2,000 Charm Squares”. This mystery project was for all the quilters on the internet who had exchanged charm squares. I had not participated in any of these swaps, but I did have LOTS of fabric (with various fiber content) in the attic. I climbed the ladder into the attic with scissors in hand and started cutting strips of fabrics. When Tom returned home, I told him what I was up to and his comment was – “a FREE Quilt”! Little did he know what this “FREE” quilt would lead to and the real costs involved.

After completing 40 of the 81 blocks, I realized that my placement of the light, medium and dark values could have been better. To prove it, I set this project aside and started working on my Y2K Frenzy quilt (which also ended up on my UFO list). I decided that it would be nice to complete this project before I turned 50 years old as a visual example of how far my quilting has come. The one restriction I imposed on myself was that I could only use the strips of fabric that I had cut from fabric in my attic so long ago.

The big dilemma came when deciding what to use for the back. It felt wrong to take fabric from my quilting stash (which I have plenty of). I debated about piecing all the strips and squares that were left, but I didn’t want that many seams in the back of this quilt. So I compromised – I used some of the squares and strips along with fabric from the attic.