11/14/2020
Edith’s “Dear Jane” Story “Coloring with Dear Jane”
Sometime around the year 2000, I saw Brenda Manges Papadakis’ book “Dear Jane: The Two Hundred Twenty-Five Patterns from the 1863 Jane A Stickle Quilt” in a magazine or catalog. I was intrigued that all the blocks were different and only four and a half inches square. So I asked for the book for Christmas. I didn’t get it, but I didn’t forget it either.
The book kept popping up here and there. I noticed “Dear Jane” quilts at quilt shows. Finally I was ordering gifts for my adult children in December 2016 from Amazon, it must have popped up in the suggestion box and I put it in my “cart.” Amazon also suggested a “Dear Jane Ruler Set” and it was a very good thing that I bought this too, as I wouldn’t have stood a chance of making each block the same size without these templates.
When the book arrived I spent several days doing “fish imitations” and wondering what I’d gotten myself into. My daughter said, “You don’t have to make the quilt, Mom.” “Yes, I do,” I replied.
First I needed to choose colors for the project. I wanted to use my “working inventory” (previously known as a “stash) and decided to use the whole color spectrum. There are 13 rows of 13 blocks, so I decided to do two rows each of the primary and secondary colors, plus one of turquoise.
I chose to treat each block in the book like a page in an “Adult Coloring Book,” which were extremely popular at the time.
I knew this would be a long term project maybe ten years or more. I tackled the blocks in the order presented in the book. I completed the first two rows in 2017 and the next 2 in2018. I did nothing on the quilt in 2019 and was a little concerned that I might never get back to it at all. Then the Pandemic happened and the resulting shut down and I decided to tackle the rest of the quilt in April 2020.
By August I had completed the center 169 blocks and sewn them together. After I began working on the triangle border blocks I realized that I should have sewn ½ inch sashing between the blocks. I purchased sashing material and ripped the center blocks apart, row by row and sewed them back together with the sashing inserted.
Although the patterns in this book are very well drafted, the instructions for completing the whole quilt are sparse. The necessary sashing is mentioned briefly on page 14 in the second half of the paragraph on the top right of the page. I am grateful to the Dear Jane FaceBook group members that clued me in to this tiny, but important detail.
In September I was working on the border triangles and looking forward to having it all done. When I finished the final triangle block I found the total number was short. I thought I had lost some of the blocks. I rejected my husband’s suggestion that one of our new kittens had run off with them. When I had gone to buy the sashing material, I had taken a few of the triangle blocks with me in order to select some complementary embroidery thread. I called the store, knowing that if I had, the people at the store would have set them aside, waiting for me to claim them. I called the store, and they didn’t have the blocks!
Each of the blocks in this quilt has a letter and number. The rows are A-M, numbered 1-13. The borders are top, left, bottom and right, also numbered 1-13. When I began the quilt I decided I would hand embroider the letter and number on each block, so that if I ever wanted to find the pattern again, it would be easy to do so. This was very important in my quest to find the “missing blocks.” I carefully inventoried the blocks and figured out exactly which ones were missing. It turned out that I had skipped a few blocks as I neared completion of the final border blocks. I was really getting tired of this project and wanted it to be done.
In October 2020 I planned a trip to visit my sister on Vashon Island, in Puget Sound, in the state of Washington. One of the delights of this quaint place is “Island Quilter” a wonderful quilt shop. During the pandemic it is necessary to make an appointment to shop at this store and I did so. Paul, one of the owners admired my quilt and helped me find the perfect backing. There was exactly 9 yards on the bold, which was exactly what I needed.
Now my “Dear Jane” quilt is on pause again. I really need a rest on this particular project. It is too big to quilt on my domestic machine. I will need to rent time on a long arm machine. I’m not sure that is even possible at this time. I may consider having a long arm professional quilter quilt it, but I’d prefer to do it myself in hopes of getting exactly what I want. For now it will go back in the UFO collection.
