Country Girl
Topic: Quilting
This quilt that I just finished has some history! Many years ago my mom thought she'd like to make a quilt out of old jeans. She chose a log cabin as her pattern and laboriously drew around templates and cut the pieces out with scissors. As soon as she started with the actual sewing, she realized that she had no patience for the process and put all the pieces away.
Eventually, those pieces of denim were gifted to my sister who used up a lot of them in her quilt-making - with much more success! Then she put away the leftovers.
Well, a couple of years ago my birthday gift box came with a stack of these leftover denim scraps. I kept only the ones that were 7 1/2 x 2 1/2 and they have been sitting in my 'I don't know what to do with these' bin since then.
A few weeks ago, I ran across an idea on Pinterest on how to use denim in quilts without sewing through two layers of heavy fabric. You just splice the pieces together by sewing in a 1" wide strip of designer fabric. The seam allowances of 1/4 inch on each side allow the denim to butt up against the next piece with no overlapping. Genius!
Since I had long, skinny blocks I used this splicing on all the pieces end to end, creating one long strip. Then I put a 1" strip on one whole edge, cut the long strip in half and sewed these two together. I continued in this manner (like making a jelly-roll race quilt) until I had a quilt top!
One additional strip on the unfinished side and matching ones on the ends made a skinny border.
I didn't want to create another border or binding and the finish on the existing border would be 1/2 inch. So I decided to make it a turned quilt. To do this, I laid down the batting, then the backing (face up) then the quilt top (face down). I pinned it all and stitched 1/4 inch all around - leaving an opening for turning.
I pressed the seam allowances in the opening then un-pinned it all and turned right side out.
The border was pinned and stitched in the ditch all around. Then I pinned the top while smoothing it into place. The quilting is a serpentine stitch up the middle of the long strips.
The prints are all scraps from a recent quilt top that I've yet to put the backing on. They were pink/teal/white/brown and featured paislies/tiny flowers/roses.
I added in some tone on tone fabric in pink and teal and some green scraps with a bit of the pink in them.
This finishes up at roughly 43 inches on the short side. It is not square but I don't know what the longer measure is. I made sure to offset the 'bricks' as I knew they would never line up just right. With this arrangement it really doesn't matter.
Here's a peek at the quilting.
This fun teal polka dot is the backing. You can see the quilting on the back is very attractive, too.
Final count: leftover denim scraps=0
This decades long family project is officially done!
Ddd
Posted by studio3d@ccgmail.net
at 12:01 AM PDT