While I was cleaning up a file drawer I discovered this sample card from long ago.

 My friend ran a patchwork shop, and she gave me this when these prints were discontinued. 

These Concord prints were available for many, many years, not like today when fabric ranges have been and gone in 6 months.  Because they were available for so long, most of my early quilts contain these prints, so it's a trip down memory lane to see all these swatches again.

 I must admit, I still have some of these in my stash, and they are still useable, and some are still lovely.

 I bought lots of them at Spotlight for $2 a metre on sale, and used them for backings and borders and setting blocks, and I still adore some of them.

 I used samples from other quilt shops to make half inch hexagons, and that project is nowhere near complete. 

I called it my 60 year quilt; it would either take 60 years to complete, or I would be 60 years old when I finished it. 

I was 42 at the time, and 60 seemed a looooong way off.  I figure I've got 3.5 years left to finish it before my 60th birthday, so I'd better get a move on, hadn't I?

 Those hexagons look awful small, don't they?  These ditsy little prints were perfect for such small scale work, because they are still recognisable in each little hexagon.  In fact the swatch card says;

"Any print small enough to be recognised in a 1 1/4" x 1 1/2" swatch."

I've kept this card for so long that I really can't throw it out now; it's Archival, and so it has to be preserved.  It can go back in the drawer for now, and come out again on my 60th birthday, when I'm celebrating the finish of that hexagon quilt.........