The Incredible Jane...

I first heard of "Dear Jane" quilts when I joined a quilting chat website. http://www.quiltingboard.com/ (You simply HAVE to visit there if you're interested at all in quilting! Wonderful people, more help than you know what to do with, did I mention wonderful people?)

Anyway..I digress. I had to find out what a "Dear Jane Quilt" was. So off to Google I went, not wanting to look dumb in front of my new found friends. (They would not have thought me dumb for asking, but well...~shrug~) I find out that Dear Jane is a quilt that was made by what I would consider to be an artist of the first rank. Not that modern quilters aren't also artists of the first rank...I could never do what some of them do. But Jane A. Stickle? That woman had to be something else! How I wish I could sit with her and learn by her side!

Check out the photos on the official Dear Jane website! This quilt is comprised of 225 blocks. The squares are four and a half inches across. The triangles are eight inches. Might seem large to a non-quilter, but consider that some of the pieces in that quilt finish at 3/8 of an inch across! Then imagine trying to handle a piece of fabric that small! "Our" Jane did it without the benefit of brand new fabrics, a sewing machine, or any of our other more modern tools. I'm positive that the quilt that contains so many tiny scraps was most likely pieced together with a needle and thread by hand...and quilted that way too.