There are quite a number of "Janiac's" in my quilting guild. The "leader"
of the group is making her 2nd DJ now. She was going to make #2 all in
Kaffe Fassett's fabrics. As trite as the saying is, it's your quilt & you
can make it out of anything you want to. I personally love the 30's
fabrics, because they are so cheery looking! There is a spin-off group that
is making their DJ out of Xmas fabrics. I do not have a DJ in my future.
It's bad enough that I got sucked into making Sylvia's Bridal Sampler, which
is a lot less blocks & somewhat larger blocks.

The facilitator of the DJ groups & Sylvia's Bridal Sampler groups from my
guild send an email on Friday's with the next block to make. SBS sends a
2nd easy, peasy block, if anyone wants to tackle 2 in one week.

I understand this is not an easy quilt to make & without the software,
extremely difficult, so you may want to look into that. Enjoy the journey &
the experience!

I think when I was a little girl, we spent the night in Newcastle on our way
from Sydney to Rockhampton in QLD. It was a small town at the time (50 +
years ago

Pauline
Northern California
"Trish Brown" wrote in message
eb.com...
Well! It's only a couple of weeks since I found out about a thing called
'Dear Jane' here at rctq. I wonder why I so badly need to make one???

Oddly, my quilting buddy (who now lives at the exact opposite end of the
country) has been infected independently of me and mentioned it yesterday
in a phone call. We had an 'AHA!!!' moment and began planning how we could
do a quilt-along, even though we're thousands of miles apart. This is
good! We figu

i) we can work slowly along and support each other by email
ii) we can share/swap fabrics to keep costs down
iii) we agree we'd both like to use 1930s prints and solids
iv) there are lots of online blogs with tips and instructions
v) a Dear Jane would be a Very Good Idea - think of all the experience
we'd gain!

Our main problems a

i) we're really only beginning quilters without all that many difficult
blocks behind us
ii) neither of us has anyone nearby to offer help/advice in person
iv) it's *really* hard to find a big enough selection of fabrics in the
30s prints we like
v) even though we've ordered 'The Book', we can't figure out how to buy
the fabrics.

So, with all the above as background, and keeping in mind that our plan is
to make each block from a different print and use toning 1930s solids as
background, here are my main questions:

Roughly how much fabric do you need for each block in a Dear Jane?

Is it a good idea to collect charm packs? Is a 5" charm square big enough
to make one block? Should/can we buy fat eighths? (Easy here in Oz, not so
easy in the US) Should we buy fat quarters and share them? Would it be
cheaper/more sensible to just use white fabric for the background and buy
15 yards each of it?

Finally, does anyone have any recommendations for good online US shops? We
really need to count our pennies on this and it's *lots* cheaper to buy
online than from local sources.

If anyone's done/doing a Dear Jane, would you please share your wisdom so
Trisha and I can get started? Thanks heaps! ;-D

--
Trish Brown {|:-}

Newcastle, NSW, Australia