If making one Dear Jane quilt makes you crazy, what would you be if you made two?
I finally got the software for my Dear Jane quilt about a week or so ago. The software is actually pretty nice. It took a little reading to be able to use it properly, but the instruction book that comes with it is pretty thorough. The good thing about the software is I can use it for some basic non-Jane Sickle related quilts as well, which was a nice bonus.
I showed you previously what someone had created for me as a design idea for my blue and orange Dear Jane quilt. I took her ideas and ran with them once I had the software for myself. I really liked her idea of the rings of color rather than the more traditional ‘Around the World’ look. I also liked the idea of using some white blocks with the orange ones. Here is what my final design looks like:
I think it has a lot of visual impact. Now I just have to work on getting a lot of different oranges as I would like each orange block to be a different fabric.
While I was working on my blue and orange Dear Jane, I thought about actually making this quilt. It will be a real learning experience for me, because precision piecing is not my strong point at all. Now I am not going to get hung up on some lost points or not so straight lines in this quilt, but I would like to do my best on it and hopefully learn a lot more about quilting in the process. Since I knew I would probably screw up every block the first time I made it, I thought it would be good to have a practice quilt too. One where I could make the block for the first time, screw it up royally and hopefully learn how to do it right for the real quilt. Here is the second design I came up with:
So am I completely nuts to be making two of these quilts? Probably. But the rainbow one will be made with muslin and colored scraps. I am hoping that I won’t have to buy anything above that for this one, though I may as I don’t have an unlimited supply of scraps!!
I have already made 2 blocks on my Rainbow Jane and will hopefully be working on my first block for the Blue and Orange Jane tonight. I will show you all the blocks in another post. I have a feeling I *may* have these finished on the eve of my son’s wedding day (and he’s only 7!), won’t one of them make a great wedding gift? LOL Okay, let’s hope it doesn’t take that long, but I know it will certainly be a long term project.
Happy Quilting!
Rachel
INSANE.. that’s what it is!! 😉 Why is it called Dear Jane?
The girl that copied the blocks and made patterns from the original Civil War quilt made a book about it, she titled the book ‘Dear Jane’ because she wrote letters to Jane Sickle as she was making the patterns. She calls a copy of the quilt a ‘Baby Jane’, which I guess would be more appropriate, but everyone just calls them ‘Dear Jane” or ‘DJ’ for short. I need to come up with original names for mine, but I haven’t thought of ones yet. 🙂
Rachel
Hey, it’s another Baby Jane newbie!! I’ve recently started doing a hot pink/baby pink version of this so I love finding blogs of people also making Baby Jane’s!
I love your rings idea – that blue/white/yellow/orange quilt is going to be stunning! Good luck with all the blocks.
A pink version would be so fun!! I will have to check out your blog to see if you post pictures. 🙂
Cheers!
Rachel
You are ambitious! I love your designs. I wish I had put more thought into my DJ quilt before I started it. I would have saved myself a lot of grief. I blogged about my midstream color revisions here –> http://minkasstudio.blogspot.com/2008/04/colors-for-baby-jane.html
BTW, did you mean for G10 to be all blue? It seems like it should be blue and orange.
I’ll be following your progress with your DJ quilts!
Thank you so much, it was so fun designing both of these, hopefully it will make the process a bit easier for me. I will check out your blog, from what I have seen on Flickr your quilt is shaping up to be amazing! And yes I did notice G10 after I had posted that picture, so I have changed it now in my design in the program. Good catch though!!! I probably should go ahead and update the picture, but I probably won’t LOL
Cheers!
Rachel
How cool! I love the blue/orange vision– that is going to be so amazing and unique. And what’s not to love about a rainbow Jane? I’m so impressed with your planning. I went into mine all willy-nilly and often wish I had taken time to really plan it out. I guess I can always start another one! 😛
Thanks for the compliments! I had a lot of fun planning my quilts, I was kind of sad that I would only be doing two versions of it, I had so many other ideas too!! But I think doing two is already crazy enough!! I will check out your blog to see what yours looks like, I am sure it’s wonderful!!
Cheers!
Rachel