ClaraLawrence wrote:
LOL, Clara! You can borrow my leaf blower! But, I think the "sorting" with the leaf blower might be more fun if you have margaritas first.

I appreciate all the sorting suggestions. I do have a plan, but like listening to ideas. Keep them coming. We have a bit of time to find a space and have several in mind, so I'm not worried about that. Tables are important, because that would be way too much time on the floor and even a good back will feel it after 615 x 224 (average HST/person) = 137,760. That's a lot of bending. So instead I am purchasing a brand new leaf blower and we will line up one wall with papers stuck to the floor with everyone's name and blow these all over the floor from across the room. No, we won't. I couldn't resist. There is a plan, so not to worry. I'm not, but margaritas are happening after! Clara

Good Morning Clara & Debbie,

I had an idea to help with the sorting. Do you have a church all with lots of big tables in their fellowship hall? You could explain you situation and I think most clergy people would love to help. You could start putting signs on the tables. A number of tables would have USA signs, then a few tables for the Aussie signs, Ireland, etc. Then on the tables establish a grid system. Something that would look like a big checker board. Number the grid sections starting with #1 - whatever to help you keep track in case you need to take a break and then it will be easy to come back and know where you left off. Place a bag of 28 triangles in each grid section. These triangles are all of the same type so you only need to pick one when you fill an exchange order. When you have a good selection of triangles are out on the tablea you can start filling the exchange order. Take a person's bag, see how many they are to get from the exchange and go around to the tables and start selecting ramdomly the triangles from the tables. This way you will get a few triangles from other contries in each person's bag. Then when a grid section becomes empty fill it up with a new set of 28 triangles and just keep filling those orders. This hopefully will eliminate duplicates in exchange people's bags and everyone will get a nice selection back. I so would love to come and help!!!!! This sounds like so much fun. The visiting and building of friendships would be precious!!!! I just thought I would try to help with your little sorting delimma. I use to do a lot of work with project teams in my previous life. I was an IT Project Manager. I worked with a lot of department staff, programmers, testers, and quality assurance people. We would gather everyone together and start laying out ideas. No idea was a good or bad idea. It was just an idea. We would write them all down on a white board. Then after we could not think of any more ideas we would start analizing the ideas on the board that everyone mentioned. We would start to cross out the ones that definately would not work and put the ones that would work to a new list. I think you get the idea. Then after we were all done we would finally have our proposed solution to but to the test. Up until now it is just up on the drawing board but now it was time to put it in action. Maybe this post will get more ideas flowing to help with good ideas for sorting. Have a good day everyone!!!!

romira wrote:
The thing is, if someone drops out, they just won't have triangles coming their way. Those who submit triangles won't be without because the exchange is for those who DO submit. There had to be a cut-off or else there'd be no way to say "Okay, we're ready to sort!" Just saying . . . it's already complicated enough (and I'm glad I'm not part of the sorting team - sorry, but my head spins when I read any of the sorting suggestions for something of this magnitude.)

crocus999 wrote: Be careful. Quality of inks and whether they transfer to other papers or fabric. Proceed with extreme caution. I thought about that too, but thought labels would be better and safer. Clara

Wondering if there is a wait list for these folks who missed the deadline?
Hate to add one more task to the already heavily burdened organizers
Due to all our complicated lives, I'm guessing a few will need to drop out & then their slots
could be filled?

I hope there aren't any quilt police in the group. I have 2 more hours of sewing to do then will be ready for cutting. All of those dashed lines are making me dizzy. So how close to the line do the stitches have to be? If they're hugging the line sometimes is that good enough? There's no way to do that much sewing and keep them exactly on the line at all times, not as fast as I like to sew anyway. I was getting too many pin pricks on the machine I started with so switched to a machine with more space to the right of the needle. At one point it was sewing when I wanted it to stop and stopping when I wanted it to sew. It straightened out though and maybe I will be able to finish the rest of them with no problems. Since each of my sheets makes 30 I will keep 2 from each that are the least perfect. I'm making 930 triangles, but will only be sending 616 for this exchange. Some of them are for the batik only exchange and I will donate some to the Queensland Flood Victims. I will send those in a separate package so they won't have to be separated.

RiverOwl wrote:
That would be great, but the logistics of doing it are nearly impossible! Do you want to mail your siggy to 516 people around the world???
Someone has suggested scanning the names from the triangle papers and printing it on fabric to use either on the back or as part of the front of the quilt. Maybe that would work for you? You probably won't get names on all of the papers, but there should be lots!