Blue Jeans Quilts

Each girl is picking out her own contrast fabric to use so each quilt reflects that girl's personality.  We are providing the batting and yarn for tying. 

We're not using a specific pattern.  Like I said, my first counselor's sister makes these quilts all the time and is coaching us in doing these.  I'll try to explain how we're cutting these...hopefully it won't be too confusing! 

Instead of cutting squares from the jeans, we're cutting the jeans so we keep the outside seam in the block.  Make two parallel cuts in the jeans leg, 8-inches apart, straight across the leg, through both thicknesses.  Then cut the "tube" very close to both sides of the inside seam, to get rid of it and to open it up.  You will end up with a rectangle or "brick" with the thick, stitched seam right through the middle. 

The easiest way to start putting it together is to lay it out on the floor.  Using the bricks, lay them out side by side, making a row and alternating as wanted with your contrast fabric, until you have it as wide as you want it.  We're not alternating exactly every other brick, using only 2-3 pieces of contrast material per row and it's plenty of contrast.  Take into account a 1/2-inch seam allowance for each brick.  Also, keep in mind that the contrast fabric won't be all the same width because it compensates for the difference in sizes of the jeans and is how you are able to make each row the same width.  However, it is still cut 8" tall, like the jeans.

 Then start on the next row, doing the same thing and balancing the print fabric and the jeans, until you have another row equal in width.  Continue until you have enough rows to make the quilt as "tall" as you want it.

Then stack every two brick/contrast fabric pieces, right side together.  Sew those together, then place each set of two right sides together and sew those together until you have the entire row sewn.  Repeat for each row.

After all the rows have been sewn, sew each row, right sides together.  You can also add a few pockets here and there throughout the quilt either still attached to the jeans and used as one of the bricks or kind of thrown all over the quilt, sewn down kind of diagonally on top of the finished rows.  My counselor's quilt has 4 pockets in the center of her quilt, all on the diagonal and with folded pieces of the contrast fabric coming out of the pockets like handkerchiefs.  It's very cute

After all the rows are sewn, the quilt is ready to be tied to the backing.  We're using the contrast fabric as the backing, so after tying the quilt, we're just folding the backing to the front as a binding and sewing it down.  Pretty simple!

Feel free to contact me if you have any other questions!
Heidi Williams  Ü