My Dear Edith Quilt

My Dear Edith quilt is based on the Dear JaneŽ quilt from 1863. I am calling mine Dear Edith in memory of my mother who isn't around to enjoy my quilting endeavours.

The Dear JaneŽ quilt is made of fifty-two (52) triangles, four (4) corner blocks and one hundred sixty nine (169) tiny 4 1/2" blocks, all of which are made of many even tinier pieces of fabric, and all of which are different from each other. One of the corner pieces on Jane's quilt states that there are 5,603 pieces in the quilt. I wonder how many my quilt winds up with.

If you're crazy enough to make one of these quilts, you can get the pictures of the original quilt as well as drafts of the blocks in Brenda Papadakis' book: "Dear Jane: The Two Hundred Twenty-Five Patterns from the 1863 Jane A. Stickle Quilt." Ž

There are no instructions included for making the blocks in the book, and there are many different ways to make each block. This quilt is a good way to develop skills in all the methods of quilting, including hand applique, hand piecing, reverse applique, rotary cutting and machine piecing, template piecing, foundation piecing! My warning to you is that this process can be very slow or very fast, depending on how enthused and engrosed you get!

There is also a software program out for the Dear Jane quilts which is really interesting to use. Not only does it have the blocks designs that can be printed off in a template format, or foundation piecing for some, but it also has a lot of intersting stuff included. There are pages that can be printed off so that you can keep a journal of your travels with Jane! There are also tips for making the blocks.

Brenda Papadakis also has a Dear Jane website called www.dearjane.com They have a mailing list for "Janiacs" to keep in contact.

I started my first block on the 22nd of November 2004. I am using mostly wedgewood blue prints and a blue gray and a dark blue, along with muslin for the background. I figure these colours were probably popular during the civil war era. As I finish blocks I will update the chart and put up a picture of my blocks. You can click on each block to see a bigger picture. The best way to do this that you don't have to arrow back each time and then waiting for the main page to reload is to put your mouse over a link and right click. Select "Open Link in New Window". When done, X to close then the main page will still be there so you can select the next block to view. I am making these blocks in a random order,so there will be a lot of blank spaces on the chart for the next while. As of the 23 of Feb 2009 I am officially finished all the quiltin on my Dear Jane. I used prairie points on the edge and the edge was finished before the quilting was...

Blocks completed: 169
Triangles completed: 52
Corners completed: 4
Pieces of fabric: 5,109
As of: 23 Feb 2009