April 10th, 2000
We Made It! All our hard work has paid off. Quilts, INC. has accepted our special exhibit of 25 Y2K quilts for IQF 2000. In addition to the quilts, they plan to create an entire display to tell the story behind the making of these quilts. This display will include computers, squishies, and journals from some of our quilters. This is so exciting!!

On a slightly less exciting note, due to a revamped sponsorship fee schedule, we need a lot more sponsorship money to be fully funded. We need about another $2,000 to be fully funded, so if you know of any quilt shop or guild which may be interested in sponsoring us, please send the information my way.

February 10th, 2000
Fortune City, the company which hosts our exhibit website, contacted me this week to offer our site for free its own domain name. They said the site was very cool and very popular which is why they were making the offer. So, we now have a much easier to rememer web address. Our new address is (http://www.y2kquilts.org). You will notice it is <.org> instead of <.com>. Someone already has (www.y2kquilts.com), besides which <.com> indicates a commercial site. We are an organization, so <.org> was more appropriate anyways.

This new address is already in effect, although I understand that it may take a week or so for everyone to be able to use it. If you get an error message, just try again in a day or so. I am on AOL, and it worked just fine for me. I believe that the old address will continue to work, but with this shorter URL, it will be easier to recommend the site to others. It sounds a lot more professional, too.

To recap our status: we have lined up more than enough sponsors for the exhibit. The final proposal is nearly ready to go, but it can't be sent until I receive an official application form from the Festival folks which should arrive any day. Once the form arrives and is filled out, the packet will just need to be mailed to Houston. We will know by the end of March whether we have been accepted.

If you have any questions, please let me know. I have already spoken with one or two regarding the particulars of getting the quilts to and from Houston, the cost of the postage, etc. These are really questions that I have no way of answering until we get word that we have been accepted. Once that happens, I fully intend to wring every scrap of information out of the guy which I can. I promise to report back to everyone just as soon as we know anything more. Since the official word will come before the end of March, we will still have plenty of time to make all the necessary arrangements before Festival.

February 4th, 2000
I am extremely happy to report that one of our members has found a sponsor for our remaining $300. We are now fully funded. I am putting together the official proposal packet for Quilts, Inc. I am waiting to receive an official form from them to fill out which must accompany our exhibit proposal. I expect to receive the form any day now.

Thanks for everyone's help. Regardless of whether or not we are accepted for the Festival, we can be very proud of ourselves for getting this far. Good job. Your next update will come when our proposal packet goes into the mail to Houston. We should have their decision before the end of March.

February 3rd, 2000
I have heard back from a few of our list members regarding sponsorship funds. We now have $1700 in funds, but are still lacking $300 to be fully funded. Please keep me informed of your progress toward finding guilds/shops willing to sponsor our exhibit.

I have heard from Eden Hunt, one of our exhibit quilters, and she informs me that she will be unable to complete her exhibit quilt in time for the Festival due in part to the expected June arrival of her first child. Congratulations, Eden! While I am saddened that she will be unable to participate, I am happy to say that I have selected her quilt's replacement. "Millennium Friends" by Elaine Voyce has now been added to our exhibit to replace "Sister Synergy" by Eden Hunt. Congratulations, Elaine!

Toward the end of February, I shall be somewhat delayed in receiving and responding to e-mail, since I will be packing up and moving to our new house that last weekend. I expect, however, that we will be able to line up the rest of our sponsors and put the official proposal in the mail to Quilts, INC., before that time.

January 28th, 2000
We now have a total of $1640 in sponsors. We still need an additional $360 to be fully sponsored. I spoke with the gentleman in Houston this morning. He doesn't believe that there will be a problem with us having multiple sponsors for our exhibit, however we need to keep it to a minimum. If we have too many sponsors, then they will be unable to list them all on a single page in the Festival program, etc. We have a total of 5 sponsors currently, with one of them wishing to remain anonymous. So, if we CAN find any sponsors willing to contribute MORE than $40 that would be great. It will help keep the number of listed sponsors low.

They are mailing an official proposal form to me soon, and I should receive it in 10-14 days. We're still working with a March 1st deadline, but I did find out approximately when we will hear back from them. He said that the decision regarding exhibits and such will be made rather quickly to enable them to get this year's catalog and advertising ready soon. We can expect to hear from them the middle of March.

January 24th, 2000
BIG, BIG, BIG NEWS!! Electric Quilt Company has agreed to pay half ($1000) of our ($2000) sponsorship fee to IQF 2000. I just received the good news today by e-mail. It only took them a week to say "yes". I never thought we'd get this far! I am amazed and delighted. (See e-mail from Electric Quilt Company below.)

If anyone has any contacts or pull with any quilt company or shop, etc., who might be interested in kicking in the second half of our fee, please let me know ASAP. We have only a very short amount of time to line up a second sponsor for ($1000) in time to get this proposal to Quilts, Inc. by March 1st.

I am scrambling to put together a second proposal packet and intend to network here in Birmingham to get this proposal considered by Oxmoor House Publishing. I have indirect contact with a managing editor there, and I'm going to pitch this idea to them starting tomorrow. This may be our best bet at lining up a second sponsor in a hurry, since they are local. Wish me luck.

I'll keep you posted.
Rachel K. Ivey

"Dear Rachel,

Thank you for sending your Y2K Quilts exhibition proposal.

We agree that the story behind the exhibition is the idea of the swap, made possible by computers and the internet. We were most impressed with your organization, as well as by the idea behind the exhibition.

We will agree to be a partial sponsor (for $1000), if you can get another company to co-sponsor ($1000). Naturally, we would wish the co-sponsor not to be one of our competing software companies. Feel free to call me directly if you have any questions.

Best Wishes,
Penny
Electric Quilt Company"

January 4th, 2000
I am proud to announce that after much hard work, the sponsorship proposal is now finished and will be Priority mailed tomorrow. It looks fabulous, if I do say so myself. In addition to a cover letter, 2 pages detailing our proposal and providing exhibit background info, and photos of and information about all 25 quilts, I am including a copy of my Y2K booklet in order to provide more basic Y2K quilting/swapping information which didn't quite seem appropriate to include in the proposal itself but that might provide more context to the person reviewing it. Thanks again to Diane Anderson for taking care of scanning and also printing out the photos for the proposal.

Our deadline for submitting a sponsored exhibit proposal to Quilts, Inc. is March 1st, so I plan to follow up in a few weeks with the lady at the Electric Quilt Company to whom I am sending this sponsorship proposal. This is our best bet for sponsorship, so everyone be praying that it will work out with them. If all goes well, EQ will agree to sponsor our exhibit, and we will be able to send the entire informational packet on to Quilts, Inc. to await their approval for the Festival.

Thanks to everyone who has participated in this. It has been hard work, but it will be well worth it if we find ourselves in Houston with the quilts later this year. I do want to remind everyone that I am still looking for more Y2K quilt photos to put online. In addition to the 35 quilts we currently have on our site, I have just received 2 more photos from a couple of newcomers to our list from Canada. I should be adding them to the site soon. If you have a Y2K quilt or quilt top photo which you'd like to see in our Gallery, please contact me. I can arrange to have a regular photo scanned if you are unable to e-mail one to me. Be sure to pass that info along to any other interested Y2K quilters.

December 9th, 1999
The Gallery section of our web site have been totally updated to include a photo from EVERY quilt which applied for the Exhibit. There are photos of 35 different quilts. If you have a Y2K quilt or quilt top photo which you would like to see in our Virtual Gallery, please either send or e-mail a copy to me. I'll get it online right away.

The Exhibit section features just the exhibit quilts. I do not yet have links from the Exhibit thumbnail photos to the pages with the larger quilt photos and information, but you can view that by visiting the Gallery section. I have added a special graphic "Exhibit Quilt" on the pages of the Exhibit quilts, so that you will be able to tell which ones are included. I hope to provide direct links to the individual quilt pages from the Exhibit page, as well as work on the Our History section after the New Year.

For everyone's information: The dates for the Festival next year are November 2-5, 2000. Be sure to mark it on your calendar and keep that weekend free. If everything goes well and our exhibit makes it in, then that will be the weekend that we can all meet in Houston (literally). Is there anyone on our list who can find out the specifics of reserving a block of rooms in Houston so that those of us planning to attend the Festival can be close to each other? Contact me if you think you can be of help in this regard.

December 5th, 1999
Well, things have been going along much slower than I anticipated due to problems with both the software and hardware on my computer. (Yes, I know that we haven't hit Y2K yet, but my computer sure acts like it.) As a result the proposal is not yet finished. Over the weekend my dh reinstalled most of our major software and it seems to have solved most of my problems. Hopefully, I will be able to have the proposal finished and in the mail by the end of the week. (Keep me in your prayers.)

Since the software kinks have been fixed, I was finally able to edit and upload the remainder of the photos from the exhibit. If you will visit our website and check out "The Exhibit" section, you will find that the remaining thumbnail photos are now online. I do not have the new photos in The Gallery, nor do I yet have pages for them which will allow you to see larger photos and quilt information. Be patient. I will be adding these things this week and next. I will also be adding all the appropriate thumbnails, photos, and pages for the quilts not in the exhibit but not yet online.

Thanks for all your patience. I'll get this sucker finished (web site and proposal) as soon as I can. I'll update everyone when the proposal is in the mail. Who ever thought we'd get this far??!! Happy Hannukah! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year!

November 17th, 1999
First, I want to thank Diane Anderson. She has generously volunteered to take care of scanning in ALL the photos which haven't yet made it online. Those photos are in the mail to her as we speak and should arrive tomorrow or Friday. Hopefully over the Thanksgiving holiday, you will be able to see all the photos online in our web site's new home.

Speaking of our new web site home, I have had to secure a free web site at FortuneCity.com to handle all the photos and information on our site. I managed to max out all my free space on AOL, so I have had to move the entire site. You can go to our regular address and can link to our new site from there. Our new address is at , which is really a hard address to remember, I know. Bookmark it and then you won't have to remember it all. Within a week or so, we will start to see an automatically inserted advertising banner at the top of the various pages of our site. This inserted banner is placed there by FortuneCity in exchange for our 20MB of free web space. That's the bad news. The good news is that 20MB of space will insure that we will not have to move our web site again. It is more space than I can conceive of us using up at any point in the future.

Our proposal has not yet been finalized and mailed. It will be taken care of before Thanksgiving. Our computer printer is still over at our old home, so I can't print the darned thing out until we get it to our new place. Plus, I will be working with Diane to have her print out a couple of things with her color printer which will save me some time and trouble on this end. Thanks again, Diane.

November 1st, 1999
Let me start off by saying that I have enjoyed organizing this. It has allowed me to see some terrific quilts and learn a little bit more about the members of this list. Every quilt photo received was fabulous and showed hard work and creativity. It was not an easy task to select a mere 25 quilts for this exhibit, but I believe that these quilts represent the full range of creative options which Y2K swappers have used in creating Y2K quilts.

It WAS my hope to have the photos for all 25 quilts online by today, but since I am relying on having them scanned at my dh's work, it is taking longer than expected. My dh isn't the person with scanner access, so a co-worker of his is the one who is helping me with this but only as he has spare time between his other projects. (Perhaps I need to bake and send some cookies to the co-worker in question to help move things along. :-) The missing photos will be online as soon as they are scanned, in addition to any other photos I have in hand which are not a part of the exhibit.

Now, without further ado.....here are the exhibit quilts.

Magellan 2000 by Diane Anderson
Across the Years - Across the Miles by Dorothy J Cochran
Millennium Charm Quilt by Virginia Smalling Corriea
Squishies Down Under by Chris Cotton
Sister Synergy by Eden Hunt
Y2K Quilt by Rachel K. Ivey
My Millennium Quilt by Susan Hammond
Bands of Friendship by Donna Lawicki
It's a Small World After All by Madeline Pacana
It's a Charmed World by Janet Perry and Sandra Perry
Y2K Around the World by Ruthie Peterburg
Y2K Perspective by Judy Peterson
You've Got Mail by Lyn Petty
Millennium Medley by Janet Pickett
Welcome to the Third Millennium by Betty Reynolds
Sun Rays and Stars by Chanin Rivenbark
From the USA for Y2K by Judi Rose
Yellow Brick Road by Jean Snyder
Behold the Power of the Internet by Kathi Swindell
Ameriquilt (With Star Spangled Siggies) by Karen R. Veiga
My Millennium Quilt by Alice Wallenberg
Y2K Visits Ohion by Karen Whiteside
Katie's Millennium Quilt by Katherine Woolm
Swords into Plowshares by Victoria Woosley
Y2K Courtenay Crown by Mary Ellen Zeitz

In addition to the above 25 quilts, 5 additional quilts have been selected as alternates. In the event that one of the above quilts will NOT be ready in time for the Festival (if we are accepted that is), then one of the alternates will take its place. The owners of the alternates will be notified privately by e-mail some time soon. (I am moving tomorrow, so it will have to wait until after I get settled in).

I am sorry to tell y'all this, but it is going to be a week or two before I can get the Exhibit online. I have all the coding finished and ready to go, but when I actually tried to put it up on the web site, I discovered that I have used up all my alloted space for my site. All 2MB of it. This is after I moved all the quilt photos and Gallery to a second AOL screen name. In order to avoid having to set up a third AOL screen name to handle the extra stuff and photos which will need to go onto the site, it will be easier for me to move the entire site to a new home at FortuneCity.com. They offer 20MB of web space in exchange for an inserted advertisement on each page. I had hoped to keep from having to mess with ads, but with all the photos eating up the space, I guess I am going to have to. Be patient. I'll get it all up as soon as I can.

Congratulations to everyone for their hard work on these quilts. Now that the exhibit has been assembled, it is time to focus on finding a sponsor. I plan on having a proposal ready to send to Electric Quilt Company no later than November 15th. I will send an update when the proposal has been mailed, and I will send another update as soon as I hear back from them. Keep your fingers crossed.

October 18th, 1999
A few more applications have arrived over the weekend. I now have 29 applications in hand and have heard from 6 of the 11 pending applications and expect those 6 to arrive BEFORE November 1st. I need to hear from the remaining 5 quilters who are on the "expected" application list. I need to know if I should still expect an application from you. I apologize if you have already contacted me, but please do so again if your name is on this list: