AMBITIOUS MILLENNIUM QUILT PROJECT HITS MAIL SNAG

How are you preparing for the upcoming millennium? Some people are taking advantage of the year 2000 with upbeat and innovative projects. One Cape Girardeau woman is celebrating the millennium with a quilt project that involved quilters from across the country and globe. Debra Rau of Cape Girardeau organized a quilt swap with 79 other people. At the end of the swap, each participate will have 2,000 different pieces of fabric to be fashioned into a single quilt. This is certainly an ambitious way to commemorate the year 2000.

Saving 2,000 different pieces of fabric for a charm quilt is often a lifetime project for quilters. But the Internet has opened up many additional opportunities for quilters to join forces for such an undertaking.

Participants signed up on the World Wide Quilting Page and keep touch with Rau via e-mail. Each individual sent Rau 79 packages with 25 separate three-inch squares of fabric inside. Rau had the arduous undertaking of getting these 160,000 separate pieces of fabric to the right individuals.

Then the fabric pieces all had to be mailed back across the country. Unfortunately, Rau learned a hard lesson about U.S. Postal Service rules and regulations. Apparently, any package weighing more than 16 ounces with regular stamps needs to be checked in with a clerk due to heightened security measures. Some of Rau's mailed packages were returned to her. Others were mailed to the individuals as intended. Still others wound up at a dead-letter office in Michigan.

Here's hoping the mailing problems will be resolved and won't overshadow such a neat way to commemorate the year 2000.