I am Dear Jane Challenged!!

To make a long story short, I began the Dear Jane quilt several years ago. I guess just the challenge of making a quilt with 225 blocks and triangle blocks on the borders and the fact that Jane did it during the Civil War all by hand and hers had 5602 pieces in it, challenged me. When the EQ software came out for the quilt I really got on board. Truthfully I had more fun playing with the quilt program and designing my quilt and choosing "my" fabrics but eventually got 50 blocks made through the years.
This weekend I decided to pull my blocks out again, line them up on my board and add to my collection. Working on row C. Working on Block C2. As you can see above, I am piecing challenged when it comes to Y seams or anything not straight. I don't do curves very well either. I'd rather applique them. However I decided to try and persevere through these. Btw, anyone not familiar with DJ blocks, they finish at 4.5" square and some have 50 pieces.

So as not to be beaten by these tiny pieces of fabric I laid my DJ ruler on it. Of course the pieces should all line up and they are not even close. What's a girl to do?? I tell people not to worry about their quilts being perfect, we can just make things work and I specialize in 'fixing' mistakes (I'm not too fond of the seam ripper but do have to use it sometimes).

My solution was to trim those bad edges down. Add strips all the way around the block and .....ta da........solution to the problem!! Sure beats trying to 'redo' this block as I have many more to do. Sometime soon I'll post some more of my DJ challenge!

Colorplay I and Colorplay 2

Here is the beginning of the series of my Colorplay quilts, even though they are spaced out over 12 years or so. The first quilt was inspired by Nancy Crow and I just began cutting and piecing with no rulers and very improvisationally, using some Cherrywood hand-dyed fabrics from a scrapbag I bought at the Houston Quilt Festival.

I hand quilted it with variegated thread, using the 'big stitch' and circles. Here is the back.

Here is a close-up view of the front of Colorplay 1.

And now, Colorplay 2, mostly hand-dyed fabrics in brighter colors, some of which I dyed myself. I used the baptist fan quilt pattern on my domestic machine and it was so terribly quilted I thought I'd never show it but with a little shrinkage when washed, I've actually displayed it and never heard a comment about the awful quilting. I think the bright colors overcome the quilting. I'm thinking I may do the baptist fan pattern on my Colorplay 3 but now I have templates and a longarm to make it so much simpler!!!