Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Dear Jane

I worked on my Dear Jane quilt this past weekend. At first, I couldn't decided which colors I wanted to do. Originally in 2003, I was going to copy the original quilt but I had trouble finding some of the colors in retro Civil War fabrics. Every color combination I thought of I loved. What stopped me was the amount of background fabric I would need. One option I had was to make a Scrap Jane where each block and background fabric would be different. I kept going back and forth with myself. I hate it when I can't make up my mind. I finally decided to look at which blocks I had made in 2003 and what color were they. Most of them were brown. Because I didn't want to remake all those blocks, I finally decided on using brown fabrics and unbleached muslin. I'm calling this one My Brown Jane. I made 6 blocks over the weekend.

I found a really great site for Dear Jane. It's called That Quilt. She has put up step-by-step instructions on how to assemble the blocks. Some of the blocks she has figured out an easier way of doing them which I greatly appreciate. Because of her, I won't get as frustrated and I may actually finish the quilt this time.

I'm still working on the Sock Yarn Blanket. It's coming along very well. It's not an afghan that will be completed quickly and I accept that. I ordered a "blanket starter kit". It has 50 mini-balls of sock yarn. Hopefully that will arrive soon. That should keep me going for a little while.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Heya, Laurie! I love your sock yarn blanket. :)

What is a Dear Jane quilt? I have never heard of such a thing!

Laurie said...

Dear Jane is the name of a quilt book that was authored by Brenda Papadakis. Brenda discovered the quilt made by Jane A. Blakely Stickle. That quilt has 225 4.5" blocks. On one of the corner pieces it says, "In Time of War, 1863".

Anyway, Brenda drafted all 225 blocks. While doing sewing her squares, Brenda wrote letters to Jane and each letter started with Dear Jane. The letters are published in Brenda's book.

We consider Jane's quilt to be the Mother Quilt and the ones we are making as Baby Janes. Not everyone is copying the Mother Quilt exactly. Some of us are changing colors or perhaps swapping out one block for another. The Baby Jane quilts are "in the style of" Jane's quilt.

You can find more information at www.dearjane.com.

Unknown said...

That sounds very, very cool. :)