Rain and Jane and Play

It's fall and it's raining. I love the occasional wet and chilly day. It makes me want to stay inside and quilt so maybe I'll get some sewing done today. Perhaps a little baking too.

 

 

Walked the dog in the rain yesterday down my favorite streets.

 

You'll be happy to know that I made my goal of getting back into stitching on my Dear Jane blocks and finished another one. Yay!

 

 

This is a huge deal for me since  - and this is hard for me to admit - I have not made any blocks at all this year. How could that be??  I've made plenty of small quilts and other projects, just have been too busy to work on my Jane I guess.  You know how that goes. Well, I want to say that I am back but we'll see.

 

A friend suggested I prep some blocks, keep them in zip-lock bags, then grab one when the urge strikes. A good idea if only I would take the time to do that. Usually, I am not that organized and when the urge strikes I don't want to prep, I want to MAKE. But I will try harder.

 

 

If you are just starting out and are not a purist and making all the blocks by hand I highly recommend the DJ software by Electric Quilt. You can print out the rotary cutting directions and paper piecing patterns and hand piecing templates instead of tracing them from the book. So much easier.

 

                                     

 

Every skill I need to make some blocks takes me so long to learn. I am not good at foundation paper piecing and I still have to work on that quite a bit. Everyone seems to feel it is so easy but I hate doing it.

 

There are many distractions around here. Like many of you, life takes up so much of my quilting time. But I hope I can find ways to continue making progress on this quilt.  My goal for November in my Yahoo Small Quilt group is to get back into it and make a few more of these blocks. It seems a lot of you have decided to do the same thing. I received so many wonderful comments and e-mails after my last post that I started a new Dear Jane Yahoo group, mostly for members of my other Yahoo group Small Quilt Talk (SQT) who are having difficulty getting their DJ quilt completed and need encouragement to keep going.    Join us here   if you would like to play along.

 

I started the group on a whim so that some of us could encourage each other and show photos of our progress. Surprisingly, we now have quite a few members and some who have become inspired to begin one too. This is great and I am happy so many of you are jumping in!

 

 

I started out by making a lot of the easy blocks to get into it.

 

 

                  
As I mentioned, I have only made 51 blocks so far. So I have a long way to go . . . .