More New BOMs - Dear Jane

It's a disease - I haven't met a BOM I did not love. Well maybe 1 or 2. Not only do I love them, I feel like I just HAVE TO do them. Even though I already have 5  . .  6 . . .  no, it's 7 going.

Last year I signed up for an 18 month Dear Jane BOM through Stitchin' Heaven in TX. Thankfully they delayed the start until January 2015.   So this past January, I received my first set of fabrics and some extra tips for the first series of blocks. 

Dear Jane is a quilt made (well finished and dated) in 1863 by Jane A. Blakely Stickle of Vermont. The quilt blocks were then drafted into a pattern and published in 1996 by Brenda Manges Papadakis. There are 169 four inch blocks, 52 border triangles and 4 corner blocks (my mathematician hubby tells me that is indeed 225 different blocks). 



I had already bought the book and in fact got it autographed by Brenda, but I thought that instead of obsessing over color choices, I would just do a BOM that included fabric. There were several choices out there - traditional, reds, blues, or brights. I decided to go with traditional, although I tend to prefer the bright colors. My reasoning? How could I do a Dear Jane in anything but the original colors? Jane went to so much work to make the quilt and Brenda took years to draft the patterns, so to honor them I decided to go traditional.

The notes that came with the fabric indicated that I can do some of the blocks using a foundation paper method. Too bad the notes didn't have the foundation pattern. No problem! I could make one.  Foundation piecing is one of my favorite methods. I love it because the points turn out nice and pointy, the seams are straight and everything fits together perfectly. If you are curious about foundation paper piecing, here is a tutorial to check out.  The one thing that paper piecers and appliquers all know is that you have to reverse the design in order to get it to come out like the picture. Oops! I forgot to reverse the design. It looks great, but my pinwheel is turning backwards. Oh well, I'm not doing it over just because a pinwheel is spinning clockwise instead of counter clockwise.

So, 1 done, 224 more to go. It feels a bit overwhelming when I look at how many more I have to make. I'll add them to my BOM list and make progress slowly and steadily (I hope).

I am officially a Janiac!