Dear Jane Motivation & My Sampler Quilt

I have been reading about Dear Jane Quilts in my Real Women Quilt yahoo group this week. I had been mildly interested in them before but after reading about them and seeing all kinds of finished baby Janes, I am hooked on making one for myself. I think it will be a long work in progress but what an accomplishment it will be to finish one. Check out the raffle quilt at the Empire Quilters website. It is one fantastic quilt that is two quilts in one. Unbelievable!

If you have read my other blog posts here, you know that I am working on the Patchwork Times Block of the Month by Judy Laquidara. This has really motivated me to sew, sew, sew. I was kind of in a slump but it has jump started me again and now my project list is growing. I am trying to finish some WIP/UFO's as well. One of my nearly finished quilts is this sampler quilt

that I made with purple Batiks, Kaffe Fasset's paperweights, and Laurel Burch cats.

It is a whirlwind of purple and red and lots of other colors in between. I wanted to do something different with this sampler by taking a regular block and using it four times in one block to make a bigger block. At one time, I was going to teach a sampler class and I thought this would be a way to show how you can turn a simple block into something different. I never taught the class but I have almost finished the quilting. I quilted in the ditch first and then kept adding more quilting here and there. One of these days I will get it done.

Happy sewing everyone, I am off to the sewing machine. Debbie