Dear Jane & Miracle Worker Status

In case you want some mood music happening!

My sewing area has looked like this for months now.  I have been somewhat quiet on my blog for a couple reasons.  My migraines continue to be a constant source of interruption to my life.  Do you know that commercial....Do you have a migraine life?  YES.....ick!   And the other reason is I have had my head down and nose to the sewing machine working on my Dear Jane quilt.  So when I feel good, I haven't wanted to spend extra time on the computer, even though I do enjoy blogging.  It is like a vacuum cleaning on your time.  

I am going to share a couple ways that I came up in cutting my fabric as I sewed each block.  This would work well if you are doing a sampler type quilt or any piece where you are doing many different blocks and not a quilt where all the blocks are the same.  For starters, I cut my background fabric which happened to be muslin into strips all different widths....like 1", 1.25", 1.5", 1.75", 2", etc.  When I got to the bigger sizes 3"+ I cut every .5" at that point.  These became my working strips.

You can see them at the top left in a pile.  In front of them you can see a pile of small pieces and strips.  These are the scraps as I trim off the excess while foundation piecing.  I go to that fabric first when I need to cover a small patch and if I don't have something big enough, then I measure my patch as they are printed on vellum....shown in the center.  Whatever that measurement is....... is the strip I pull from my strip pile.  Then I personally use the Carol Doak method of foundation piecing using a postcard and an add 1/4" ruler or on this project I used an add a 1/8" ruler a lot.  Doing it this way, eliminates waste of fabric.....the pieces I threw away were literally crumbs and on a project this big.....it makes a difference on yardage.

So yesterday was a huge day in Dear Jane world around here, I finished my last triangle in the morning, in the afternoon I added the adjustment strips that needed to be added before adding the triangle border.  I spent the evening after the Silver Fox left for work, & added the triangle borders.  I must say...... I sat in my chair and just stared at it for quite awhile before going to bed last night.  

 I started this baby in 1998.  Now don't think I have worked on this continuously....there have been many times it has been in it's drawer waiting for my return!

I need to embroider my signature and I am going to include some names of our relatives that have fought in the Civil War as well.  It will also have a scalloped edge all the way around.  I added the strips around the outside for that today.  I won't work on that part until I have the center quilted.

 My plan is to complete it during the years of the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War that is happening right now.

So I do have until 2015......hopefully it will be done before then!

Dear Jane Love!

Little Quilts In My Mailbox

I belong to the Carol Doak list on Yahoo and we are in the midst of a postcard swap. I love doing foundation piecing and have used Carol's method for a long time.  Our only requirement was to use one of Carol's designs.  Carol is a great teacher and if you have the chance to take a workshop from her, do it.  You will have a great time and learn a valuable quilt technique.  I have always wanted to do one of these swaps. 

I used Timtex to give the cards body and stitched a heavy satin stitch around the outside edge to finish it.  We were divided into groups of 4 and we each made 3 postcards and mail them out to the other 3 in our group.  Here are the 3 cards that I mailed out.

A little ray of sunshine.

Just had to make one with a patriotic theme and then added a little machine embroidery bling!



A little Iowa scene.....represents what is outside my window.

And of course you want the back to look as good as the front and I wanted a vintage feel to my card.  I used a Tim Holtz stamp set for the "postcard" and star design.  The lines were from a journaling stamp from Close To My Heart.

I got my first "little quilt" in my mailbox yesterday.....how fun...... a sweet little butterfly.  Who wouldn't want one of these pieces of pure joy when you pop open that mailbox?  I wonder when the next one will come and what will it be.......