Getting started on a denim quilt

Late spring last year, I was able to help Luke out with some piecing for a quilt he did for the Stagecoach music festival, piecing the denim/star part of the quilt background you can see in this cute pic from Instagram (I have no idea who @sophieschillaci is, but it’s her photo with some country music star). Anyway, while I was piecing that Greg, our mutual friend, saw it and decided he really loved the denim and wanted something similar, but not the same. He wanted the stars and the denim, but wanted to add a spiral and less structure.  I took him up on it and together we started brainstorming.

First stop was the local Goodwill, then St. Vincent’s and another thrift shop or two, buying the cheapest and largest jeans we could find. He washed and dried them all then brought them back to me to start chopping them up.

I cut them so that most of the seams were gone, but left a few intact.  I also purposely left some holes that I then patched and darned.

I’m piecing it together more boro-style than anything else I can name.  Just laying them on top of each other and topstitching close to the raw edge.  I’ll built it out, incorporating about a dozen of those stars. I plan to back it in flannel, then will quilt it with thick yellow thread and top it off with some hand-stitching.  It’s slow and tedious, but I’m learning along the way.  The rugged and raw nature of the denim is lovely. The precision of puzzle making is equally enticing and I love how the two aspects work together.

My advice so far:

• Buy more denim than you think you’ll need. I cut up 23 pairs of jeans.
• Use a 90/14 universal needle.
• Denim is heavy so work in sections.
• Don’t expect to get it done quickly.

Expect more soon (but not too soon!)