Dear Me. Dear Jane.

One should beware beguiling blogs that seduce one into folly. In this case, a little Fabadashery can get one into a lot of trouble...and in this case its starting the Dear Jane quilt. Of course, unlike others that tackle this quilt, I am not planning the colors or the layout. I'm also going to use Kaffe or Kaffe-like fabric because I love it and this quilt requires you to get up close and personal with the fabric you choose.

In case you don't already know...The Dear Jane antique quilt is immortalized by Brenda Papadakis in her book "Dear Jane". It's a sampler of primarily 4.5 inch finished blocks. Some pieces get so tiny that paper piecing seems the only way to go. And I'm NOT a paper piecer. And when I saw the block shown above: A2, I thought I would give it a go using my sloppy unJane-like flip triangle method. This block uses a .75 inch grid (1.25 inch unfinished) which is the same grid as my bounding bunny block.

The very center piece of this block finishes as 1.5 inches, unfinished 2 inches. So I made two half-square triangles using the Easy Angle Ruler. Then I put the two half square triangles on top of each other and sew on the diagonal (but over a tiny bit). Then I iron the flip triangle over and cut away the excess fabric under the flip.

All of the other sections are also made using flip triangles. Then the sections are sewn together. My block is not close to perfect given there was no precision piecing involved. And I'm not showing you the back side because it would certainly give you night terrors.

Here are the Dear Jane blocks I've made so far. The two on the left side were made following recent block picks made over on the Fabadashery blog. I made the other two blocks to see how well I would tolerate hand applique. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would because its a nice way to wind down the day.