Dear Jane - So close, yet so far.

I am so excited to finally have the center of this top together.  It has been in progress for 15 years!  I have been reflecting a lot on not only my quilt journey, but the actual journey this UFO has been on.

On the original quilt, Jane Stickle embroidered her name, year and "in war time"; 150 years ago.

I haven't decided what I will put on my signature corner block.

As a page through the book, I made notations on when I completed a block.  My journey with this project started when I lived in Chicago (1998), and my quilting friend in Des Moines asked me if I would go on a quilt retreat to Shipshewana with her to meet the author of the book, Brenda Papadakis.   Sure I would go along, but I didn't know if I was interested in making the quilt. 

We met Brenda, and she had such passion for this quilt, and listening to her story of discovery, and research sucked me in to waiting to make the quilt.  Our other quilting friends joked we were in a Dear Jane cult.  My Dear Jane journey started with limited quilting skills and limited time, as I was traveling about 40 weeks a year for my job, I did a lot of fabric shopping, but not much quilting. 


The center is together, and I need to start working on the border triangles.  I think 2014 will be the year I get the triangles done and the outside border done.  Not sure if I will get it quilted this year, but I do want to get the top done.  So I will start working on the triangles, a few each month.