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Dear Jane

About 10 years ago, I met a woman who was working on a Dear Jane quilt. I looked at all the teeny tiny pieces, and thought "No earthly way. Not in this lifetime."  Since then I've seen a few at quilt shows, briefly admired the chosen color scheme or the handiwork, then moved on. I was never one of those to stand and focus or think in front of the quilt. It was simply too much, too tiny.
Here's a picture of a quilt in the original style, from www.dearjane.com:


See all those tiny squares? The entire block (each square) measures 4.5" when finished. Those are tiny, tiny pieces in those blocks. Smaller than my fat fingers even care to think about.

I bought the book yesterday. WHY? Curiosity for one reason. But also, with all my fabric accumulations from last year and leftover scraps from quilts I made, this is just one of many possibilities to help use it up. I don't know if or when I'll ever start. In the introduction, there's a note that the original quilter of this pattern (civil war era) made an embroidered note on the quilt that it has over 5,000 pieces in the quilt.  I am absolutely mind-boggled that someone would not only quilt it, but keep track (or go back and count) the number of pieces.

Here's a look of the quilt with modern color schemes:
 

There are some quilts I've mulled over in the back of my mind for many years before I actually start them. There's quite a few rolling around in there now. I suppose I can add one more to the jumble. :)

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