1,183 and counting

During the long drive from Memphis to St Louis last October, Julie and I talked about a lot of things. We were talking about the class I was about to give on free-pieced letters. "Well, you've made about a thousand letters..." she started.

"No WAY," I objected, "I haven't made that many!"

"Sure you have. Haven't you ever counted?"

"Well no, I'm not a numbers kinda person. I never list things quantitatively like that. Lots of my bean-counting co-workers do, but I never have a numbered list."

So we thought about it, driving along. We did a rough count, and sure enough, the number got pretty high, but didn't quite reach 1,000.

"You're not including your duds," Julie said.

Oh.  "OK, you're right, I guess I have done a thousand letters. That's amazing."

I didn't think of it much after that, but when I was making all the letters for the chicken quilt, I got to wondering. After all, up until the chicken quilt, the quilt with the most letters was Nine x Nine, with 81.

So I made a list. Wow. The total is 1,183.

One thousand one hundred eighty-three.

And that still doesn't include the duds.