What is the Dear Jane Quilt?

Jane A. Stickle started creating the quilt during the civil war, completed over 169 blocks in 1863. The sampler quilt comprised of ‘169 square blocks. 4 pieced corner triangles, 52 pieced border triangles and a unique scalloped border, altogether the original quilt contained a total of 5,602 pieces in the quilt this is why the quilt has been a well known and much loved masterpiece’.

History of Jane Stickle

Jane Stickle was born in Shaftsbury, Vermont in 1817 and later married Walter Stickle sometime before 1850. Stickle did not have any children of her own, but she looked after at least three children in her neighbourhood. In the 1860’s Jane Stickle was 43 and living on a farm alone. In this time Jane was creating the Dear Jane Quilt. She lovingly created the quilt as a ‘reminder of the turbulent times the country was going through at the time, Jane Stickle carefully embroidered the words “in War Time 1863” into the quilt’. Although there is little information found on Jane Stickle the only information people have found is through census at the time. Jane was well educated which is proved by her impressive needlework and creativity using geometry. Jane also won an award for her quilt at the Bennington County Fair in late September 1863 “Mrs W. P. Stickles for Best Patched Quilt”. Its no wonder Jane won the award with her unique design with each patch being unique. 150 years later and people are still recreating the historic quilt with their own adaptions and creations using bold, bright and exciting colours and layouts. The original Dear Jane Quilt is on display at the Bennington Museum in Vermont and people all over the world travel to see this quilting masterpiece.

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The Dear Allison Quilt

The breathtaking designs inspired Sweet Pea's designer Allison Nash to create our very own Sweet Pea version of the quilt perfect for our machine embroidery lovers. These quilt block designs are perfect to create your very own Dear Allison quilt using all the different unique designs in your own way. Even better these designs can be purchased and multiplied to create many different designs including table runners, mug rugs, bags, cushions and the options are endless.

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Sweet Pea’s very own ‘Dear Allison Quilt’

Bulk sets of the Dear Allison are available here to 'catch up"

or each separate design can be found on http://swpea.com/

Some lovely designs created by our customers:

made by Erica Clegg using Dear Allison Block #17

made by Fran Pepin using Dear Allison Quilt Blocks (coloured blocks only)

made by Sandra Eggett

made by Rosemarie Ann Fisher

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Dear Allison Quilt Blocks available singularly or in 'catch up' bulk sets

http://swpea.com/search?q=dear+allison Sources: Mitchell, A. (2013) Discover the Dear Jane Quilt. Retrieved from: http://www.craftsy.com/blog/2013/05/discover-the-dear-jane-quilt/ Bennington Museum (2016) Jane Stickle Quilt on Display at the Bennington Museum. Retrieved from: http://benningtonmuseum.org/press-releases/jane-stickle-quilt-display-bennington-museum/