Rainbow Jane Flimsy!!!!

You guys!!!  Oh my gosh, how did I forget to post this here?!

I burrowed into my assembly work all last week and got my Rainbow Dear Jane fully assembled Tuesday night!

I put in cornerstones on this one - went through all the colors I'd received for the blocks and found the one of each color that I liked best. Used that one for all the stones in each radiating color band. I think you can get the idea here:

Regarding earlier thoughts of quilting this in large sections, then joining them - SCRATCH THAT IDEA~!  There are far too many precision points in small measure to match up to ever get it to line up perfectly after quilting. You'd have waves that will never block out completely, or mismatched lines. Besides the whole challenge of the serious thicknesses that fight with the foot as you're sewing.

As you're assembling your Babies, you'll find that tiny 1/2" sashing places many thick, thick seam-allowance stretches that ride so close to the foot that it's often difficult to keep the edges perfectly lined up. I found pinning like this to be super helpful, because on most blocks, that top Baby likes to slide away from the foot with a strong pull:

I thought about putting on the zipper foot to see if that helped, but the sashing is so narrow that you need a really perfect 1/4" seam. I can't get that without using this particular foot.

GO SLOW. And it also helped to provide support/tension from 3 angles: front and side with my left hand, from the back with my right hand reaching through the machine's throat (absent here to do camera duty):

I have other things that require attention, and after the intensity of assembling her, I do need a Jane break. But I can't wait to give her some more attention next month!!  I plan on marking the scallops and the quilting I want in the blue cones, then I can pin-baste her. I think I will just SID the inside babies, quilt the background cones/scallops, and bind her. I do want quilting in the individual squares, but I'll leave that for "The Second Stage" at some further point in time. Maybe then I'll have an easier machine to heft a VERY HEAVY 85" quilt through.  :)   Because this flimsy is one heavy sucker!!!  

I can't hang it in my Quilting Needed Closet - 

It'll just fall off the hanger. So it sits on top of my treasured quilts armoir stack.

No fears of forgetting her quilting, though! After two years of working on her, she's a very good friend, indeed.

P.S. -  Men. . .  ::shaking my head::  Mr. Caulkins: "This is what it would look like if a quilt farted:"

WAHOOO!!!!!

You guys!!!  Guess what!!?

I just finished all my blocks!! All inner Babies, all triangles, all kites!!  I just want to dance all over the neighborhood.  ;D

Here's what I did with the signature kite. Used "Time of Change" instead of "War Time" to fit our situation, and finished the piece count in my spreadsheet for how I'm assembling it all (I'm doing cornerstones with the sashing) so I could fill that in while I had that floss out. 

And something to note about that sig kite:

When you print out the kite pattern, the star is closer to the flower (as you see below) than it is in the book. I'm fine with it , but it got squishy putting in the words, so I thought I'd pass that along.

More Rainbow Blocks

I may just succeed at catching up to finish in August. The back-log is down to 30 after this week's 7, and my progress chart just looks so COOL to me.  ;D   It's been a long haul. Well worth it. I'm so glad I started on this journey.  Have you worked on a Jane this week?

I-13

J-11

J-12

K-1

K-3

L-3

LS-13

The blocks I caught up last week

Oops - I forgot to enter my blocks last week. It was a good week, too. Lots of Jane babies have been lurking in my hand-stitch tote, and it's very relaxing to work on those in the evening. 12 blocks in the week! Most of those came from the hand-stitching, but a few off the machine. That pace is not happening this week, though.  ;D

So, the set:

And the individuals:

G-10

G-11

G-13

H-9

H-10

H-12

I-9

I-10

I-12

J-9

J-13

RS-12

This week's catch up work

March 24th, and it's snowing. . .   So crazy! If we hadn't moved from Florida, I'd've been in shorts and flip flops for a month already.  :D

Got 8 more Jane blocks finished this week:

H-6

 

H-8

H-13

I-6

I-11

J-5

J-8

RS-10

Lynette checking in

Hey there!

I got 4 Baby Janes finished today. There's a whole load in my hand-stitching tote - hopefully those will start flying into the finish pile quickly now that I have no bindings, labels, or hanging sleeves to do.  :)

I-8

G-9

LS-10

RS-11

Retreat bundle

So, I got these finished on the retreat.

G-6 is crazy to do, isn't it?!  Super cool, though.

And . . .  I just noticed I messed up my LS10, putting some red patches that should be white. It really bothers me, so I'll be picking that out enough to fix it.  :)

I have 8 others that are half-way pieced, and 12 that need some hand-stitching. But I'm too tired to do any tonight. Time for bed already!!  

Jump Startin' Jane

I'm driving tomorrow to go on a 3-day quilt retreat. I'm really excited because all I'm taking to work on is my Rainbow Jane. 

I haven't worked on this since August. When we moved from the temporary apartment to this house the little box with all the prepped blocks I was working on got lost. But I found it last week! In the meantime, each month I've received my 10-fabric pack for the next set of blocks. For whatever reason, I wouldn't work on those while the others were missing. Maybe I was worried I would mess my system up. (I do know myself - heh!)   At least now with this jump-start, I'll be back on track for working on her regularly.

(back in August)

So, I've got all my Dear Jane stuff packed up and ready to go. Let's see how many of the 70-block backlog I can put together in 3 days! That's a LOT of Baby Janes, and we all know how fussy they can get. How far can I push the chart?!

As of 8 Aug 2012