Denim Quilt

Notice I'm not calling it a Jeans Quilt? Because that would say it's similar to the other Jeans Quilts that have come before (see here and here). When in fact, it is not. It's still made of jeans, but also other stuff. And made in a different way. Thus, a different name.

Anyway. So you notice you have a pile of jeans like this lying around the house (or, more accurately, stashed in a cupboard, growing at an increasingly rapid rate). What to do, what to do!?

What else, but make a quilt! (Actually, there is loads of other things you can do with denim (see?), but quilts use lots of jeans in one go, which was the goal here.)

Anyway, I wish (as always) I'd taken more photos of the progress, but pretty much, you cut loads of circles out of denim and lots of squares of scrap fabric. You sew the circles together first and then put the squares of fabric in the middle. The way it all works out, the good side of the denim is the back of the quilt and the fabric side is the top. 

For this reason, this is a really cheep quilt to make. Because you don't need to buy batting (the stuff in the middle of the quilt), or binding, or backing fabric (which tends to be quite expensive because it's generally got to be quite large). Obviously it's not as warm as a quilt with batting in it, but because of the denim, it's still heavy and thus warm. 

This was the moment when I realised that even though I'd cut 120 circles and squares, I still needed twenty more of each, because the quilt just looked too short. Sigh. On the plus side, this is what the girls looked like at that point:

Which meant that getting the final bits cut and sewn wasn't actually that painful. Rachel did rouse herself to help me with the pins and sew parts as well. Sewing the squares in involves folding the flaps of the circles onto the squares and sewing around them. It gives the back of the quilt this fun floral circle pattern, which is nice.

It was hard to get a photo of this, not only because it is big, but also because when the girls saw what I was doing this happened:

I was running short on time and lighting (it was 4:45pm!) but I hope you get the idea.

I love looking at all the different scrap fabrics, again so much given to me by others! And some with long history - there is a scrap of fabric from the boxer shorts I made in grade eight Home Ec class! Yikes!

Ah fabric. From my mum, my friends, random strangers even! Fabric that I've seen the girls wear in dresses, or have used for their books, or bunting. Fabric that mum has in table cloths, or made me dresses when I was little.

Ok, I'll stop being nostalgic now and move on with life. Quilt made. Hope you like it.