IN THE BEGGINING

In the Beggining

Quilting is something I have taken up in later life basically because I was bored and needed a hobby of some kind.  My best friend also decided to join me in this hobby so we started off with a Block of the Month and absolutely no idea what we were doing.  The internet is one of the best places to learn something new and thats where we got most of our information reading and watching you tubes.

I came across these post and websites about Dear Jane,  often referred to as That Quilt and as I did more research and reading I thought, this is something I would like to tackle.  I am not kidding myself into thinking that it will be done in record time because I have lots of other things I want to do, but maybe an ongoing project that I can pick up whenever I feel like making a block.

So firstly I bought the book, then quickly realised that I really needed the computer program.  I continued reading and learning more about this project. We were off on a trip in our caravan to Melbourne so I decided I would have a go at hand piecing a block during our travels.  I laboriously traced off a couple of patterns and found some fabric and packed it all with my small cutting board and needles and thread etc.  I managed to complete one block which looked quite ok, but I was still undecided on the background fabric

At a later date my daught gave me a copy of the CD. I installed it on my computer and promptly forgot about it, although not completely it was still in the back of my mind.  We were going into the silly season and we get so busy there is no time to do anything except socialise but once it was over I again started to think about Dear Jane.  I read lots of posts and was having difficulty deciding what fabric to use for the background.  I didn't want to lay out hundreds of dollars on fabric and put it in the cupboard for the next ten years.  I came accross a post by a young woman who was wanting to make a dear jane but had limited funds.  What she had written made me stop and think. Jane would have used what ever was available like many others of her time such of old clothing and whatever fabric she could find during war time. So why not use what was readily available, with this in mind  I decided Calico was going to be my background fabric.  Its easily obtained anywhere and the price is right. The rest of the fabrics will be what ever I have in my small stash and any interesting pieces I find when I am shopping for fabrics.

I plan to stick to the colours of the original but not necessarily the same fabrics.