Dear Jane Quilt

Background Some time in the late 1990's I fell in love with the Dear Jane Quilt, a sampler quilt made of 225 different blocks. The original was made during the Civil War by a Vermont woman, Jane Stickle. This is a link to the official Dear Jane website. To learn more about the Dear Jane Quilt, scroll down this page; below the Dear Jane Quilt icon (on the right), you will find a collection of Dear Jane links.

Minka Meets Jane I hesitated to buy Brenda Papadakis' book, Dear Jane: The Two Hundred Twenty-Five Patterns from the 1863 Jane A. Stickle Quilt. After all, why did I need one more book in my house? Eventually, I gave myself permission to buy the book even though I was not going to make the quilt and even though I was more interested in contemporary art quilts than historic ones. I just wanted the pleasure of looking at Jane's quilt, her blocks, and other people's copies of same (aka Baby Janes). I had no idea that this book had created an international craze/cult and that I was about to become one of many Janiacs! Even when I looked at the photos of Japanese interpretations of the original, I did not understand the impact of Jane Stickle's quilt upon quilters around the world. Nor did I notice that the book was then on it's 4th printing. My most favorite Baby Jane remains the blue one from Japan on page 46.

Yet Another UFO? One thing lead to another. People kept suggesting I just make a few blocks. Eventually, I made my first block, Bachelor Buttons. (In her book, Brenda drafted and named each block.) This was also my first attempt at fussy cuts. One block lead to another, and somewhere along the way, I got hooked! I made more and more blocks. Over the years, I made over 90 blocks, then I took up painting leaving little time for quilts. After dealing with breast cancer in 2000, I got back into making Dear Jane quilts for a while. I believe I put this project down in 2003 and did not pick it up again until at least four years later, and that was just briefly. Now I'm back again -- thanks to Flickr.

Enter Flickr Or more accurately, enter Minka into the world of Flickr. I tripped over one group after another. And then discovered the Dear Baby Jane group which was working on the quilt together. They had just started and I had made most of the blocks they had already done, so it was easy to catch up. Actually, I'm a few blocks behind but, now that I'm done with taxes and the Adar series (on this blog), I am ready to get going! The group has a blog, too.

Trip 'Round the World -- Or Not? I have a few design problems that I'm working out. When I made my first blocks, it did not matter what colors they were since I was not going to make the entire quilt. It took me a while to realize that Jane's blocks are arranged by color in a "trip round the world" pattern -- concentric diamonds of color. I wanted to follow Jane's lead but that meant either re-doing some blocks or moving blocks to different locations. [I'm working on giving myself permission to move a few blocks.]

Color Issues The color issues are bigger. To fully appreciate them, view this Flickr photo. To be continued . . .