Repurposed Jeans Quilt

Geff and I had several pairs of old jeans that weren’t good enough to take to the Goodwill so last spring I made a quilt out of them.   I call it a picnic quilt because of the size and weight of it .  It is 63 x 54 (which is a lap quilt size) but it is fairly heavy due to all the denim and would be very sturdy for a taking on picnics. 



I found a free pattern online for how to make it at:  http://www.equilters.com/library/jeans/jeans_gallbaros.html


 
It was simple to make by just cutting a cardboard circle template to cut circles from the jeans.  Geff’s legs are so long (he’s 6’4”) that I could get 16 circles out of 1 pair of jeans.   Luckily we had several pairs of jeans because I needed 168 circles for the quilt to be 12 x 14 rows.  

For the centers I used some leftover quilting scraps and some fabric my neighbor Jane gave me.  I tried to use mostly reds, tans and blues.   There is a square of batting in each circle but you can leave that out if desired.  




The neat thing about this quilt is that as you sew the circles together it is getting “quilted” so once you have the circles done your quilt is done.   You can see on the back of the quilt how it is quilted once the circles are sewn together.

 

I used alternating dark and light denim so that the back would have a patchwork effect.  The two patches with flowers were off the pockets of an old pair of my jeans (no not Geff’s)




The worst part of making this quilt was once you are done you need to take Snip scissors, clip the edges,  then take a stiff brush and fray the cut edges so it has a rag effect.  This makes a big mess and you don’t want to do it inside. 



It reminds me of the 70’s for some reason, but I like it.