DEAR JEANNE, A SAMPLER QUILT

In the 1990s when quilters were beginning to be fascinated by the "Dear Jane" quilts that were surfacing, I also was intrigued.  

I thought about making one for a long time, but decided I needed to put my own spin on one.  In 2015, I started making 5" blocks from designs that I had used in my quilts and other needlework over the years.  After making 64 blocks, far from the 125 in the original; I set it together thinking I would hand quilt it.  That never happened due to eye and hand problems.  Now in 2022, I am trying to finish up some of those old projects.

I'm still not able to hand quilt and I rely on machine quilting the smaller quilts that I now make.  I knew that I couldn't handle this 52" square quilt on my home sewing machine.  So, I disassembled it into four quadrants; machine quilted each separately; and reassembled using a quilt-as-you-go technique.

The quilting stretched my machine quilting abilities. Since there were 64 different blocks that each required a different quilting pattern and 3 different thread color changes, it was time consuming. However, I really enjoyed the challenge.  The fun part was reliving all of the designs from my past projects, and the myriad of fabrics used from my stash.

I have named this quilt "Dear Jeanne" as four generations of my family have the middle name of Jeanne.  Hopefully, there will be a fifth generation some day with that name that can inherit and appreciate the quilt.

THE STATS: "DEAR JEANNE, A SAMPLER QUILT", 2015-2022, 51"X51", HAND APPLIQUED, MACHINE PIECED, MACHINE EMBROIDERY, MACHINE QUILTED

My quilt really pales in comparison to Ricky Tims' "The Quilt Show Guest Artist Sampler". His sampler is spectacular! (seen on Instagram under rickytims)

I'm now on to another older quilt top to finish!!