I Dropped the Button Box quilt – a Millennium quilt

The “I dropped the button box” crazy quilt is a Y2K quilt. What is a Y2K Quilt? It is a Millennium quilt. At the turn of the century as it approached quilters made quilts that had 2000 or 2001 different pieces of fabric in them. Millennium or Y2K quilts were made to celebrate the year 2000. The idea was that that there were no repeated fabric patterns in it. I adapted the pieces of fabric rule to be 2000 Crazy quilt fabric or embellishments. This meant that pieces of ribbon, lace, braid, charms and buttons were also counted on a Y2K Crazy quilt. This meant that in order to make a Y2K quilt you had to have a large variety of fabrics in your stash. Very few people had so much, so regular quilters swapped fabrics in order to sourced 2,000 different fabrics and complete the project.

Crazy quilters who were online swapped fabrics, thread, lace, bead, charms, and buttons too! The process of swapping fostered a quilting community that at the time was in infancy. All this activity took place in yahoo email groups. These groups eventually moved to Facebook becoming Crazy Quilt Divas and Crazy Quilt International. They are still very active and people are only too willing to help and advise stitchers who are new.

I loved making the “I Dropped the Button Box” quilt and it captured a creative time in my own crazy quilting growth. As I have said the CQ definition of pieces of fabric became ‘bits’. These bits were either a different fabric, lace, braid, charm, buttons or ribbon. The quilt was named when I was short on the number of ‘bits’ until I realised that my button collection would solve the problem. The quilt was covered in buttons by the time it was done!

It was started in 2000 and completed at the end of 2002. Yes I did not make the 2001 deadline. The crazy quilt contains all sorts of fabrics, lace, braid, charms, button and souvenirs. There are fabrics from friends, swapped or gifted, scraps of costumes I have made and clothing from family members and friends.  Since I am a scavenger of all sorts, many materials were sourced in second hand thrift stores and garage sales.

Measurements

There are 100 crazy quilt blocks in the I Dropped the Button Box quilt. The blocks started life as 6 x 6  inch (15 x 15 cm). By the time the quilt was assembled and seam allowances added the blocks are 5 x 5 inches. (13 x 13 cm) Including the Border the quilt measures  60 x 60  inches (150 cm x 150 cm)  

Method of working the I Dropped the Button Box quilt

Using the ‘sew and flip’ or ‘stitch and flip’ method I pieced every block first. This was so that I could work out the set of the quilt. Also crucially since I needed approximately 800 different fabrics that could sit together happily I wanted to be sure I had enough. While I pieced all blocks in one sitting to avoid duplicates, I added the lace, ribbons and braids, tucking their ends into the seams.

After every block was pieced I worked through the pile hand embroidering and beading each block. The buttons and charms were added last. I added all the ‘hard’ items last. If you add them as you go you will find your thread constantly gets caught on them as you stitch. When I assembled the quilt I interfaced the border with a double layer of fabric as it is a very heavy quilt. It has hung on the wall for 25 years and it is still square with few signs of sagging.

This series are great to learn crazy quilting techniques, give you ideas on how to embellish your blocks and what stitches to use on your Crazy quilt seams. Each block is documented alongside a free crazy quilt block pattern. With each block I explain which stitches I used to cover the seams and I link to tutorials in my Stitch Dictionary. The technical details are included such as what threads I used, on what type of fabric, dyes used and if applicable I include design notes.

If you want to learn Crazy Quilting here are the links to the free crazy quilt block patterns in the series:

Block 1,  Block 2,  Block 3,  Block 4,  Block 5, Block 6,  Block 7,  Block 8,  Block 9, Block 10, Block 11,  Block 12,  Block 13,  Block 14,  Block 15, Block 16,  Block 17,  Block 18,  Block 19, Block 20, Block 21,  Block 22,  Block 23,  Block 24,  Block 25, Block 26,  Block 27,  Block 28,  Block 29, Block 30, Block 31,  Block 32,  Block 33,  Block 34,  Block 35, Block 36,  Block 37,  Block 38,  Block 39, Block 40, Block 41,  Block 42,  Block 43,  Block 44,  Block 45, Block 46,  Block 47,  Block 48,  Block 49, Block 50, Block 51,  Block 52,  Block 53,  Block 54,  Block 55, Block 56,  Block 57,  Block 58,  Block 59, Block 60, Block 61,  Block 62,  Block 63,  Block 64,  Block 65, Block 66,  Block 67  Block 68,  Block 69, Block 70, Block 71,   Block 72 ,  Block 73,  Block 74, Block 75, Block 76,  Block 77,  Block 78,   Block 79,  Block 80, Block 81,  Block 82,  Block 83,  Block 84,  Block 85, Block 86,  Block 87, Block 88,  Block 89, Block 90, Block 91,  Block 92,  Block 93,  Block 94,  Block 95, Block 96,  Block 97,  Block 98,  Block 99, Block 100

All articles in this series can also be found in the Crazy quilting category and the Crazy quilt details category

If you enjoy this series you may be interested in a tutorial I have written. How to work decorative crazy quilt seams is a comprehensive tutorial converted to a pdf file. When I converted it I realised how comprehensive it was. At 19 pages of information it is a mini ebook and resource worth investigating!