Snowflake Melt

H9 - Snowflake Melt

For a long time now, I've wanted to replace this low-contrast Dear Jane block, H09 - Snowflake Melt . . .to  go from blue flowers to tigers.

The Fabric
For starters, I did not like the fabric. It's not just the blue color and low contrast; the fabric quality is rather awful. It was purchased at a well-known national chain of fabric/craft stores, is thin and it feels synthetic despite the fact that it was identified as a cotton.

F2 - Kaleidoscope

A few other blocks are made of similar cheesy fabrics (one is the pink colorway of the blue flowers). I do not plan to replace them since the colors are OK, otherwise, I could easily spend the rest of my life replacing blocks. I want to work on something new!

The replacement fabrics are much nicer choices. The only catch in using the tiger fabric is that this block now closely resembles F02 - Kaleidoscope. Wouldn't it be fun to have a DJ quilt made only with this tiger fabric? I could name it Jane and the Tiger!

Redraft
After studying Connie's photos of Jane's original quilt, I was convinced that the only white border around the snowflake is the sashing. Now that I look at them tonight, I'm not so sure of myself. You can see Connie's photo of Jane's original here. Making the snowflake, larger made it possible to piece (rather than applique) the diamonds.

When it comes to counting the pieces in this block, the two changes cancel each other. The old block had 4 fussy cuts; this new block has 8.

To enlarge any photo, just click on it.


My Dear Jane Stats - as of Friday, Sep 30, 2011
169 square blocks
16 blocks made twice or thrice
3,559 pieces (in the "keeper" blocks)
100 of the "keeper" blocks (59%) have 632 fussy cuts
29 of the "keeper" blocks (17%) use directional fabrics (such as stripes and plaids) -- 230 pieces in all

127 (75%) of the blocks were hand-pieced
16 (9%) were hand-appliqued
23 (14%) were hand-pieced and hand-appliqued
3 (2%) were machine-pieced and hand-appliqued -- these were very early blocks made before I completely abandoned machine piecing for this project: E10, G13, J13