Jeans Quilt

I decided to make a jeans quilt after having seen one that my mum had made. I liked the frayed edges and appliqued hearts. So I collected together some jeans, a pair Andy's old jeans and a pair of Sev's and someone from work donated three or four pairs that she was going to throw out. So these were all painstakingly cut into 5 1/2 squares. I cut out about 130 squares. I think I will probably only need 120, but there may be the odd one or two that doesn't work for whatever reason.
Step two meant cutting out 33 hearts from some cotton material that I had bought. One with flowers on and one with strawberries on. The strawberries look very realistic. You could almost reach out and pick one. So these were cut out and appliqued on using a zigzag stitch on the sewing machine.



Then I randomly sewed the squares with hearts and the squares without hearts into strips of eight squares each. This made 15 strips of eight squares. I have laid them across the backs of the dining room chairs here. Then all of those 15 strips were sewn together to make the final top of the quilt. I was very pleased with the result. To make the edges frayed I snipped at them all, giving myself a blister in the process. Then put the quilt in the washing machine with a tennis ball. Don't ask I don't know why but apparently this helps with the intended fraying. Mine didn't come out as frayed as I would have liked, so I may need to pick and snip at it a bit more.

Then I sewed on to the back a nice warm fleecy material in bright red. It really sets of the blue jeans material and matches nicely with the hearts. So here is the finished quilt. It didn't take too long to make at all and I am very pleased with it. I might just think about making sarah a quuilt like this but with green hearts, or even stars. Then again if I could put sheep on the squares that would look really cool, but I don't know how to make sheep shapes to applique on - could be tricky.