March 17, 2014

Project: Jean quilt

So a friend of mine made a jeans blanket.  Although I've never seen it, but when she talked about it almost everyone would said "I love my jeans quilt" "It's the best quilt"  So I thought hey I'll give it a shot, why not.  We had inherited a sewing machine from Dustin's grandma after she passed.  I had a sewing machine downstairs but it's one of those ones that's in a cabinet, so you need LOTS of room to sewing anything.



So now I went searching for jeans.  Dustin is a pack rat and keeps everything, so all his old jeans were in a box downstairs.  It took me about 2 days to mark and cut everything.  I didn't want one with the pockets, although I kept the pockets for other blankets.

I cut the rectangles, I used part of a cardboard box. The rectangles were about 10.5" long. The cardboard box is actually part of a baby wipes box. 


So I needed 9 rectangles across and 11 rectangles down which worked to about 99 rectangles.

I sewed them together.  I sewed them about 0.5" from the edge.

 I also only had a few really dark patches.  I worked it out that they all fell in a pattern.  In one line the black fell into the 4th square, then the next line the 3rd square, and so on and so forth.

I laid the blanket out on the floor so I could visually see what it would look like.  On a side note, it was really hard to keep the dogs off this blanket.  Every time I went to adjust something there as a dog's body part on it.

Then I sewed everything in sections.  I sewed two rectangles together, then one line of rectangles, then I sewed a section of 4 together.  I was always double checking to make sure I had the right black rectangle in the right place.  Lots of work but it only took about 2 days to sew it together.

It measured about 68" by 84".  I measured in the center of the blanket to get a true measurement.  Then I had to put the quilt batten in.  That part was easy and quick to sew.

I bought a king sized sheet from Jysk.  It was about $11.00.  I know some people put fleece on but I thought that would be too warm for Dustin.  He gets really hot when he's sleeping.

This was a bit of a pain. As I had to make sure that the sheet wasn't wrinkled and was laying flat.  Then I sewed one side at a time, between each I would lay it out again and pin it together.  I also had to leave a long piece so I could make an edging.

So here is my finished product.



I'm really proud of this quilt.  As I've never done anything like this before.  The last time I sewed any project was in grade 7 when you had to take a Homeec class.  I have to fight my kids for this quilt there is always someone using it.  I think this will be a great addition to our cabin when we start using it on a regular basis.