How to Make a Denim Patchwork Quilt

Upcycled Denim Patchwork Quilt.  HOW TO MAKE A JEAN QUILT (Beginner Sewing). DIY  Easy Denim Quilt Tutorial Using Old Jeans.   It’s so simple …. just strips of fabric, arranged next to each other …. you could get very precise and make sure each strip was the same width, or you could do as I did …. and go with the flow …. I like the slightly-less-precise approach to dealing with scraps – aside from anything else, it avoids generating too much in the way of *more* scraps.

The other thing I wanted to do was graduate the shades in each block from dark to light ….. and use predominantly denim, with a strip of a printed cotton in each block …. I like.

Each block is arranged next to the other, alternating horizontal and vertical stripes …

I’m not that much of a purist that I won’t concede that using the machine for this sort of piecing makes a huge amount of sense ….

I’m ironing to the dark side for each block as I piece it ….

And keep on building those blocks …. lining those junctions up nice and tight as we go ….

Just keep piecing, just keep piecing, just keep piecing piecing piecing …

Until you have yourself a quilt top that’s exactly the right size …. this one here is single (twin) bed size …. there’s about 4 whole pairs of jeans in this one, and all sorts of odds and ends. I finally gave up some of the liberty quilt fabric I bought when I went to the Quilts exhibition at the V&A a couple of years ago …. plus some odds and ends from girls’ dresses, mens’ shirts, old skirts, a linen tablecloth … even a little upholstery brocade snuck in there.

Sandwich time!

tape, pin, tack …. quilt!

I’ve used the totally lush quilters’ dream orient batting, and the backing is a blue vintage double sheet – so washed and used it’s almost as soft as flanellette …. scrumptious.

I’m having a bit of a moment with those foldover bindings …. this one is finished with strips of vintage ribbon in co-ordinating colours. And my second obsession of the moment – quilted borders …. this time I’ve free-motioned it in a pattern that echoes the rail-fence piecing. I like ….

It’s totally dreamy …. those blues are so tranquil …. my daughter noted how well it worked in her white-and-teal bedroom (I’m ignoring her not-so-subtle hints), but I think it’s subtle enough that it’d work in a boy’s room too. (I would have modelled it in my son’s room to prove this, but that’d mean tidying it up first, and that’s just a step too far for me!).