Dear Jane, More or Less?

Can you believe it!? Some three years after I began, I have completed my Dear Jane quilt top!! 

Maybe. :-)

A group of ten or so of my local quilt buddies got together back in 2007, each to work on our own version of this beauty.

After a few of us got started, it turned into a friendly competition to see who could stay "caught up" on the ten or so blocks we did each month.  I was the first to complete all my blocks!! (I HATE to be outdone!! LOL) But then, Paula finished hers, quilting and all! and I was left behind. 

Paula's FINISHED Dear Jane!!



And just lately, Norma put hers in the frame for hand quilting.

And mine languished in the unfinished projects pile while I deliberated over doing the pieced/appliqued triangles or not.

(At least I've come a long way from "Dear Jane, Why Are Your Mocking Me?" back in April of this year! LOL)


I decided, eventually!, not to do them; instead I will hand quilt the pieced/appliqued patterns on plain background triangles.  I like the less "busy" look of plain triangles.

When I auditioned the borders back in August, they "felt" too big for the small scale of the blocks.  I can't tell now, after they have been attached, if they are too bulky looking.  I kinda like how they enclose and protect the little blocks.  Do you think they are "too much!?"

I made the sashing larger -- quite a bit larger at 1 1/2" finished as opposed to the prescribed 3/4"! -- so that my hand quilting would show up better.  That's why the triangles have to be so big -- at least they have to be so big so that the points are centered in the sashing, see?

I could lop off an inch or two around the edges.  The background fabric triangles would lose their points -- so I don't love that idea (I lose enough points without deliberately sabotaging them!:-D).  And on a bed, the triangles would be part of the overhang and not necessarily affect the look of the blocks.

What to do!?!

Sometimes its hard to know what to "lop off" and what needs to remain to advance the best of the design.  John the Baptist, teaching and assuring his followers he was not the One, said of Jesus, "He must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30, KJV). 

What a succinct and perfect analysis!! Even standing back, looking from a distance or through the lens of a camera, I can't tell what Dear Jane needs.  And it's like that in my walk with God, often.  I don't always know what parts of me need trimming, but I know that there must be much less of the "I" and much more of the "He."  If I spend any amount of time with Him, though, He gently tells me what bits of me need cutting loose so that He can advance the intricate and beautiful parts of me He has spent so much time perfecting!

It's a grand feeling to have completed this part of Dear Jane, and to anticipate the hand-quilting journey (another three year project, if my track record is any indication! LOL)... and like my time with Jesus, the best is yet to come!

Blessings!