Austen Family Album

http://austenfamilyalbumquilt.blogspot.com/

I was born to blog. As my friend Deb says--- it's like having your own personal newspaper:

1. An audience---you!
2. No editors, so I can put commas wherever I like.
3. And it's a visual medium like a picture book.

I have started yet another blog (see the others over on the left) with a free quilt pattern---a block of the week for 36 weeks on the topic of Jane Austen's England, her family and friends.

I love to read about Regency England and I never seem to get bored reading Jane biographies. Does that make me a Janeite?

The pieced patterns for 12-inch blocks will be posted every Sunday for 36 weeks beginning with the first Sunday in April, 2014---April 6.

The project will be an album sampler, the kind of quilt popular in 19th-century America and again in the 21st century. We are not going to reproduce an authentic Regency-era quilt.

Sister's Choice

Given the name about 1890

Sister's Choice by Becky Brown

in my Ladies' Album reproductions for Moda

I've picked blocks from my BlockBase digital index to published patterns with names like Village Square, King's Crown and Sister's Choice---blocks designed and named long after the Austen era.

Each block reminds us of a real person in Jane's life.

Jane's Aunt Philadelphia

I've read Jane's novels too and there will be some references to those characters but my main interest is to tell stories about the family and relate them to the years 1770-1820 in England, especially for American readers who have been confused about what a living is, how much a guinea is worth and if an entail and a pelisse are a good thing or not.

I'm not an expert on Austen, England or the Regency so I'll give you links to other sites and books each week.

I've got my great team of stitchers----Becky Brown, Dustin Cecil and Georgann Eglinski--- testing patterns and choosing colors, and Bettina Havig is also making model blocks. If you've followed my other block-of-the-month and block-of-the-week blogs you know what wonderful things they do with fabric.

I've already started posting about color and fabric ideas so check it out.
http://austenfamilyalbumquilt.blogspot.com/