A Denim Quilt

Boxes of jeans

     My cousin contacted me and wondered if I could make him a quilt out of old jeans that he had saved.  He wanted something heavy to lay under.  I send sure, I could do that.  One Saturday afternoon he stopped by with six boxes of old jeans.  Well I would have plenty to work with.

Cut squares

     I started by cutting apart the jeans and then pressing them so I could cut from flat pieces of fabric. I opted to do alternating 12.5 inch squares with four patch squares of the same size.  For the blocks with the pockets I needed to add some fabric so I could get a 12.5" square.

Four patch square

     I chose two lights and two darks for each four patch block.  After putting them together I top-stitched the seams open.  I felt this would help tame the bulky fabric.

Top-stitching detail

     Then it was time to start putting it together.  I laid out the pieces on the floor and played around until I got a pleasing pattern.  After stitching them all together, I again top-stitched open all of the seams.  That was a workout wrestling it through the machine.

Detail of block layout

     Before deciding on how I would finish the quilt, I talked with my quilter about if and how she could do this unusual quilt.  I did make sure that there were no metal rivets included in the pieces so that I wouldn't have a problem getting it quilted.  We agreed on an opened up simple quilting pattern and a lightweight batting so that her machine would not get hung up on the thickness.

Quilting detail

     She did need to occasionally stop the quilting pattern when it got to too many layers in some of the pocket areas.  I then applied the binding by machine, no hand sewing with the heavy denim.

Finished denim quilt

     The finished quilt is so big I couldn't get it to lay flat in my foyer.  It finished at 84" x 108".  I didn't even use half of the jeans he had brought me.  I wonder what he is going to do with the rest of them.