Monday, October 26, 2015

Pride and Joy - Denim Quilts

beginner's denim quilt, backed with fleece

Denim Blankets - I love them!  


I saw at a craft fair that a lady was selling these for $200.  I liked her design, but not the fabric she chose.  (Don't we all have different styles?)  I like this design as it reminded me of a chess board, and I like chess.  But she tied hers with yarn.  Yarn on blankets - yuck!  I loved the happy colors of this - and the musical motif.  It made me so happy just looking at it.  Before I was finished with this, I began another for my son and daughter-in-law's upcoming wedding.  This time I focused more on including cute pockets.  Each blanket became better than the last.
batik checkerboard denim quilt
     I asked a friend to pick out a fabric that neither had an obvious top or bottom to it.

She picked out this batik from Joann's Fabric.  I was thrilled with her selection!  Though I had never worked with batik, I was quickly sold on it.  You can see on the left side that I didn't worry too much about one fabric going over it's boundary.  That's a cut-up pair of little girl's shorts.  So cute!  And once again, I used the checkerboard design... Each square again is 6 x 8"  which is a perfect ratio.
     By now I was hooked.  I was buying little kids' jeans from garage sales as well as online Facebook yard sale pages.  I feel a little guilty cutting up perfectly good denim, but I just can't help myself. This is my newest obsession.

80's denim

     After way too much thought, even for a creative person, I decided to mix things up a bit.  I went with an 80's lighter denim, changed the checkerboard to add a few more colors in the range of baby blue and beige, and the BEST change of all - I made it bigger! All three of my 6'2" boys said my previous blankets were not a good size.

Backing:

And because of the bigger size, my backing of FLEECE made this whole blanket a perfect fit - in more ways than one.  So there it was, the perfect width to use the most amount of fleece.  As far as the quilting went, I sewed "stitch-in-the-ditch" style like stair steps throughout.  Each blanket became better than the last, but when this one was done, I realized I forgot to add enough cute pockets.  Since I don't strive for perfection, I didn't lose sleep and was thrilled with the results.

Vibrant denim quilt, great childrens' pockets

You can see I've found pockets with bling.


It really adds an element of fun - and it's quite a thrill to find these pants/pockets in thrift stores and imagine what they're about to become.  If you look closely at the full-length picture, you'll see this one is still being secured by safety pins.  It isn't finished and with Christmas around the corner, it'll just have to wait.  For this quilt, I focused more on the pockets and stayed with one print to finish the checkerboard effect.  It's such a happy quilt and it makes me so happy!  I discovered doing this that if a pocket didn't measure the way I needed it to, I'd simply sew it on to another denim square.  That way I could stop stressing over pockets fitting exactly as I needed them to.  I attached the small pockets onto a denim piece using clever stitching.


    While I didn't pick this fabric, I love it's bold, masculine colors.  There's all kinds of browns, a honey beige, teal green, and some yellow.  I found this safari-motif in Joann's Fabrics and am thrilled with it!  I went through my growing stash of 6" x 8" denim squares for the darkest of squares.  I considered using a second and third fabric to mix in with the safari print, but was worried about the busy-ness of it all.  I'm still deciding on the border, so more on that later on.
     So these are my fun quilts.  Between working on these, I make newborn baby blankets for friends and relatives and their little ones.  You can easily see - I just plain like to make blankets!

My common pattern

So here's my formula:  6" x 8" denim squares, cut from childrens' pants or skirts.  Add another fabric to make a checkerboard - or add 2-4 more to change it up.  Add a 4" border all around, and back with fleece.  Stabilize the front to the back using safety pins, then sew a staircase pattern by 'stitching in the ditch' to secure the blanket.  (I never use yarn!)  If you use 10 squares across and 10 down, then you'll have a good sized blanket 56" x 81" of yummy, comfortable warmth.


If you'd like to make suggestions for my next blanket, please leave me a note.  I'd love to hear from you.

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