Dear Jane So Far, plus BAD NEWS!

I was anxious to look at all the Dear Jane blocks I'd finished so far in advance of visiting the original Jane Stickle quilt tomorrow at the Bennington Museum in Vermont, so I threw them up on my design wall in no particular order and snapped this photo. I think they are looking pretty good! They look a bit wild, since we weren't supposed to trim them yet, but I get the sense that the fabrics will work together in the end. I may remake one or two of the blocks that seem especially wonky later on, but we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, the heartbreaking bad news is that I just called the Bennington Museum to double-check some directions and learned that the quilt is no longer on display! I am so sad/mad at the same time. I am pretty sure the museum's website indicated that the Dear Jane quilt was on display through the end of the month, but believe it or not,  nothing I said to the poor woman who answered the phone was going to get them to put it back up on exhibit tomorrow. For me.

Here's a link to the museum's description of the quilt on its website. Read the last line of the text under the photos, and tell me if you agree that the quilt should still be on display!

Split stars for October's Block Lotto drawing

Aren't these great? The pattern is so simple, but the blocks are striking because there's such contrast between the fabrics. I really like this block, and hope that I'll get lucky and win this month. Maybe I'll even get around to making 5 more blocks to boost my chances.

It's funny, these blocks finish at 9 inches, so they are 9 1/2 inches unfinished and feel ENORMOUS to me. I think I've been infected by the Dear Jane quilt project, where the blocks finish at just 4 1/2 inches. Teeny, tiny blocks with lots and lots of pieces.

I'm really excited to be able to report that I think I'm going to be able to see the real, original Jane Stickle quilt on Friday. I'm heading up to Middlebury, VT to see my oldest son perform in a play, and I just realized that Bennington, where the quilt is on display through the end of the month, is almost right on the way!!! Almost. My husband's already agreed to the detour, so it's a plan. I'll take a photo and post it after the pilgrimage. 

Baby house quilt top finished

I've just put together the house blocks made for a friend's baby quilt. I think it's adorable! Now on to create the back and quilt it---the baby is due next week!

Lucky find: the Wiltwyck Quilters Guild Show

I was in New Paltz, NY today and was lucky enough to be handed a flyer for a quilt show only 20 minutes away. So of course I jumped in the car and headed over. The show was called Quilts in the Valley and it was the Wiltwyck Quilters biennial show, held this year in Accord, NY

I saw quite a few quilts I really liked. Here are some that  was able to get decent photos of:

The Way We Were by Marie Reed, Tilson NY. In the note about this quilt in the program, Marie said she'd made part of this quilt in a class, and the rest on her own. She appeared to have fussy-cut images from fabric and appliqued them to the backing, like some 200-year-old quilts I remember seeing in a Vermont museum a couple of years ago. Really charming!

Here's a detail:

Along the same lines, I like this quilt, called  My Village Quilt by Joan Perpetua, Kingston, NY. There was something old-fashioned but modern about this quilt at the same time, and it was nicely done.

Wooly Flowers, by Lois B. Stewart of Poughkeepsie, NY, was interesting too. It looked like she'd used a thicker wool material to create the flowers, and had appliqued them to the surface. 

 

I was blown away by the quilting on this quilt, called Cool Vibration, by Roberta Brodie of Hyde Park, NY. She said in the program notes that she'd made it in a 6-month class. It was very impressive.

Here are a couple of details that show the quilting. The quilt was 3-dimensional because of the quilting, and it was really striking.

 
Another really impressive and very large quilt was this one, called Rainbow Sorbet, made by Joan Carragher of New Paltz, NY. It's made entirely out of little puckered fabric disks (called yo-yos?) that are just stitched together with space in between, creating a lacy effect. She said she'd gotten the idea for it from a photo she'd seen in a magazine of an antique version of the quilt. Here's a photo of as much of the quilt as I could get into one photo, with a detail.

 

I loved this quilt, called John O by Peggy Smith of Glenford, NY. It's quite  simple, but the fabric she chose is striking---it really has a presence. She said she'd made it for her son to take to college.

I also admired this quilt, which is called Colorful Nine Patches and was made by Evelyn Urbom of Rhinebeck, NY. She said she'd been inspired by the fabric she found for the border to create the rest of the  quilt, and it seems she'd gotten the 9-patches in a swap. It was really attractive, with great colors.

The last photo I'm posting from this show is of a Dear Jane variation by Liese Burice of Red Hook, NY. The colors she'd chosen were lovely---they were somewhat muted, and covered the rainbow, but it worked together very nicely. I was interested to see that she'd made a border like Jane's, but with a variety of colors for the solid triangels. It looked great---she must have a really good sense of color.

That's all for now. Thanks for stopping by!