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In 1863 Jane Stickle of Shaftsbury, Vermont finished
a "sampler" quilt with 225 different blocks. In 1996 Brenda Papadakis published a
book of patterns taken from Jane's quilt. I
"discovered" the quilt while visiting my sister, Diane, for Christmas in 2000. She
showed me the book that and said her mother-in-law was making the quilt for her by hand and Diane
was going to handquilt it. I was particularly excited by the pieced border triangles, a format I
hadn't really thought about before.
When I got home, I thought about getting the book,
but as a freelance graphic designer, I had so much going on that I didn't have time for the
projects I had committed to let alone start a new one of such complexity. I put the idea
"on a shelf" for a while.
When
I moved to Lowell, Mass. in May 2001, I ordered
the book from Brenda. Frustrated by the lack
of space in my new apartment, I found I couldn't
finish any of my current projects because
there was no place to set up a sewing machine.
Upon unpacking some of my fabric, I decided
to take the Woodrow Studio's William Morris
prints I had bought "on spec for a special
occasion" and make the quilt by hand
since Diane's mother-in-law proved it could
be done.
Then
I found the Baby Jane thread on the Quilting
Forum at About.com. I just couldn't stand
it anymore. I had to jump right in with the
others. I started the quilt at the beginning
of July 2001, and have been putting scans
of the blocks online as soon as I've filled
up a page of 8 images. I have also tried to
include the block diagrams I used when they
differred from those in the book and several
pages of information I found fun or useful
useful when working on this quilt, including
links to other Dear Jane webpages (and, with
luck, the beginning of the Dear Jane webring
(coming soon !)
I
finished piecing the blocks in May 2002 and
the triangles on New Years Day 2003. I named
it at that time from a quote by Andrew Carnegie
(one of the co-founders of the place where
I went to college.)
All
that remains is to put the sashing on the
blocks and put it all together. And to quilt
it, of course.
--
rim (A.G.Lindsay)
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