Okay, I'm jumping in; please add my name to the list of participants. I bought the book last year-- found an inexpensive used copy through abebooks.com. The software won't run on my mac so I'll be making use of ThatQuilt blog. I've never paper-pieced before, and I plan to for this. AND I'm considering doing much by hand. My biggest obstacle in getting started is-- as others have expressed-- deciding on color. I would love to use my scraps ala the original Dear Jane, but frankly, I fear I'm going to end up with something ugly (or at least that I don't like) for a lot of work done.

-- Jillaine

The software can run an Intel Mac either via Bootcamp (natively with reboot) or a virtual machine (Parallels or VMWare Fusion -- runs jointly with OS X apps). Of course this entails additional costs for a copy of MS Windows and virtual machine software, if not using Bootcamp.

If you are interested, see the EQonMacs Yahoo group for more information.

Thanks Sandpat ... I'm going to give it a try :-D

Thanks Bev; I'm aware of all that. I choose not to go that route, though.
Just seems like an oxymoron to run Windows on a Mac... ;-)

Yes, I understand :-).

Welcome Jillaine!!
I understand the color decision making... Actually I wouldn't worry about it ending up ugly - I'm sure it will be gorgeous! Consider the original Jane - made of scraps of fabric of the times. It looks incredible. I think perhaps you need to decide on the background - do you want it to "pop" out of a stark white or off white? I'm assuming here that most scraps will look better on the light than dark - although Chocolate Janes are equally stunning. You will have very small pieces of your scrap fabrics showing up per square - these will be small enough that you can be real particular about fussy cutting by auditioning sections of your scraps [what I often do is make a paper copy and cut out the piece of paper to make a window.] Or you can simply decide to just cut away and what will be...Even the background fabrics don't have to be exactly the same fabric, although the same tone will tie it together more. This is where your quilt will become cohesive - it will hold the scraps together and unify them. The squares are small enough to where even a fabric that differs substantially won't necessarily pop out offensively.

I will put some additional paper piecing tips online before we start in January.

Yeah! I received my DJ package, book, CD, and rulers for my birthday. Now I need to figure out the color scheme. How much fabric is needed for the background fabric?

Most quilters have a tendency when purchasing fabric, a color palette, style etc. Most scraps will tend to pull together into a cohesive quilt because they follow our purchasing patterns. Most of the fabric available in my area is primitive/country so it is easy to pull together a warm palette because I have bits and pieces from shop BOMs and custom orders. When I shop for myself, I tend toward cottage florals as they are the opposite of what I see on a daily basis. Now I am purchasing 1850 reproductions and have one quilt ( and a smaller scrap quilt) planned from this grouping.

All that to say, take a critical look at what is hanging around and you may be able to spot a trend that works for you. Planning color placement or having a unifying background can help hold a scrap quilt together.

I bought a bolt of Kona white which I thought would be waaayyyy too much but I knew I could use it for other projects so I went for the whole thing. I've been amazed how much I've used and I still have about 100 blocks to go. Paper piecing uses a lot of fabric.

Wow! That is a lot of fabric.