WIP: Millennium 2000 or Y2K Charm Quilts

Second Millennium or Y2K Charm Quilt Top ~ 2010

Back in 1999 when I started quilting, there really weren't any quilt blogs, but quilters were hanging out on quilt message boards on sites like quilting.about.com.

Lots of quilters were swapping 2-1/2" or 3" fabric squares (or charms) in order to make a Y2K quilt with 2,000 different fabric squares. There were even magazine articles about how to join these swaps. Some swaps were set up individually via email (there would be lists of people willing to swap on various websites); but others were “centralized” swaps with one person coordinating the swap.

Once you joined a swap, you made up sets of 80 squares of different fabrics, plus a signature square and a very short biography.  These sets were called “squishies” because the envelope or baggie containing the set was soft and squishy. 

There were usually 25 members in a swap.  If all worked as planned, you would end up with 2,000 different squares, or charms.  This was a really inexpensive way to get a large variety of fabrics.

A close-up view of the signature squares

Signature squares from the US and even Canada

I had so much fun swapping charms that  I ended up with enough squares to make THREE millennium (or Y2K) quilts.  My first Y2K Quilt was a 2004 Christmas gift to one of my staff for their support and hard work.

First Millennium 2000 Charm Quilt ~ 2004

And, now, here we are 10 years later, and I’m still trying to finish my 2nd Y2K quilt!  It’s pictured on a queen-size bed in the beginning of this post.  I don’t know exactly when I started & finished this quilt top, but it’s been about two years.  It’s still waiting to be quilted!

But wait!  There’s a 3rd Y2K quilt somewhere … oh, yes, here it is:

It’s still in this bin!  This is a picture of all 25 squishies, each containing 80 different fabric charms.  You can see the squishy on the top is from Alabama.  Hard to believe I’ve had these for 10 years!  Maybe I’ll get this quilt done sometime during the next decade!