Monday 1 February 2021

Blossom Jane - Journey begins

[well this started off as a page .... Im never sure about whether something should be a page or a post .... its the librarian in me!!! So I made the page but then I thought its just going to end up as one long stream of pictures of individual blocks? so now I will post about it as I go along and pull together with a label .... sometimes I infuriate myself!]

And so the journey begins 😊😊 lets see where this take us.

I want to make this quilt for my next quaffle (quilt raffle) I was blown away by the support for my last quaffle and knew i wanted to do another. This pandemic has hit us so hard in so many ways, this is what i can do to help. Plus its good my my mental health!

I have wanted to make the Dear Jane Quilt for so long, never quite sure how i would do it or if i could do it. Now I am confident enough in my quilting skills that i think i can do it. I needed to find the fabrics i wanted to do it in. We were sooooooo lucky to get our holiday into Japan just before the lockdown hit. This was also March the season of blossom and I saw so much blossom on my walks.




This is where the idea for the Budsmam Blossom Jane began. Now we all know i love a metalic fabric and especially Japanese metallics .... so the back ground is a no brainer! I got 4 meters each of three of my favourite blossom fabrics from Japan Crafts. I spent ages messing about with colouring in and excel and finally came up with my starburst layout.

I have a new notebook, which i aim to record the progress in. I dont have a copy of the book, cheapest i can find it is £70 !!! A good friend loaned me hers and its interesting but i am more interested in the book "plain and fancy" by Richard Cleveland which is where Brenda Papadikis first saw the Jane Stickle quilt. So I have ordered a copy of that. The most interesting article I read about this was by the lovely Jane Rae:
Fascinating. I aim to try and follow what Jane Stickle did as much as possible, the center block G7  had green fabric in it which was only replicated in the outer edge 4 blocks. I like that, Jane seems to have had a sense of order and symmetry which touches me. I need this too, and in these times i feel the need for it more and more.
Well after a search on ebay, i got a copy of the book! it cost £50 but thats the cheapest i have seen it anywhere. I am still waiting for the plain and fancy book and the civil war quilt books to arrive, really excited to see what they say!

Ok first few blocks made! got stalled a bit but thats ok.
This block is the first I made, its top left on the quilt, Jane didnt repeat any fabrics apart from the green she used in the center block, that she repeated in the four corners. So I am using this green to replicate that.




I love this, so glad i thought of this, inspired by a person on IG who records her liberty fabric like this. As i am not keeping the quilt i felt this was a good way to still have a physical record of it.
the block on the left is a favourite, it has Osaka Castle in the middle and mount Fuji top right





 I managed to pick away at this over the christmas break, some more challenging than others! Now I am thinking do I make these blog posts and pull together with labels? Rather than have a page? Oh the dilemma!!!
Och, stick as a page just now and put on the furtle, thats what i will do.







This one with the bunnies might be my absolute favourite so far!

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