Second Denim Quilt

Here is the second denim quilt.  I am afraid I finished it before I saw someone wanted a tutorial so can't really do a step by step for this one.

I am just about to start a new denim quilt, completely different to this one, I am going to be making it up as I go along so will do some photos as I go and see how it turns out.

I kept looking back at this quilt thinking it looked a bit drab in colours for my youngest niece so decided to brighten it up a bit by adding some fabric yo yos.  These are circles of fabric that you cut out and then turn over a small hem all the way round and do a running stitch around to keep it down, the you draw up the thread and fasten it so that its all gathered in the middle.  Then you flatten it out to make it look nice and I added a button to the centre before sewing them onto the quilt.

This is a close up of one of the yoyos attached to the quilt, the next photo is of the whole quilt.  It still looks a bit dark but I think its more girly and looks better in real life than in the photo.

Third top

Here is my other top I made, its a heavier knit cotton that the butterfly one but still tshirt material.  Just have to remember that the gold comes off when I iron it (as I found out trying to press a piece).

Butterfly Top

This is the second top I made myself.  I bought the piece of fabric as a remnant and it cost me £6.  The fabric is a cotton t-shirt type of fabric.  I have enough left over to make a skirt for my granddaughter for her birthday.

I used a top that I like because it is comfortable to wear as a pattern.  The front neck is gathered and the back neck and raglan sleeves are pleated.  It has elastic around the hem and bottom of the sleeves.  The buttons on the front were in a bag of buttons I was given.

New Top

I have found a lovely shop in Lewisham where my MIL lives that sells loads of different kinds of fabrics, and they always have a big wooden bin at the front with remnants in.

I have bought a few bits from there in the last couple of months to make my self some tops but hadn't got any done, but yesterday I decided to go for it and make one up.

The fabric is sort of netty, very open so you can see through it.  The pattern on it is nice and bright where its been sort of embroidered or something with some silky deep colours.  I found a stall out side the shop selling braids and lace in all different colours and found one that matched the fabric in colour so bought a couple of metres of that as well.

I decided I wanted a square neck to my top and had a top indoors that had this kind of neck to it so took that in to help me cut it out.  I had another top that I liked the style of but it was a little bit too tight so I folded it in half and put it away from the edge of the fabric and cut around the the opposite side leaving some extra fabric to make it a bit bigger.  The extra fabric in the middle where the neck is I gathered up to fit the piece of braid I used at the neck line and then just sewed the braid on over the top of the neck hole.  The hem adn sleeve hem were easy to sew, I zigzagged the edge first to make it a bit firmer then folded it under and stitched around using a very slight zig zag stitch to make it stretchy.

 I have a pink vest type garment that I can wear underneath which came with another top I bought in a similare type of fabric.

I am very pleased with the top, I reckon it cost me about £10 to make altogether and I have some fabric left over which I might use to make a skirt for my granddaughter.

Denim Quilts

I saw some denim quilts on the web and thought it would be a good idea as I love the idea of recycling so I asked everyone if they could save me their old jeans and I had enough to have a go.  The ones I had seen were what you call raggy quilts where the seams are done inside out so that you get a shabby look to them.  Some had fleece on the back and this too had been put through to the front and fringed but on pricing it up I thought it would cost too much to buy fleece as I wanted to make four of these quilts for my four nieces.  Their ages range from 12 to 21.

On the web it said a good size to cut the squares is 10 inches and to do the quilt 6 by 8 blocks.  I started to cut out the squares from the jeans but soon found that it was hard work trying to find a big enough piece of denim in todays style of jeans to cut a 10 inch square so I started to cut them with a seam in them going down the middle or to one side what ever.

After cutting out as many as I could I decided that the ones with the seams might look better with some embroidery down each side so it made it more of a feature.  My sewing machine does embroidery stitches but I had not yet used any of them so did a try on a spare bit and was happy with it so carried on.

When I had done them all I decided I would sew some wadding onto the back of each square as I am not that keen on quilting by machine and I thought it would be tough going trying to quilt through the whole quilt once made up.  I stitched around the out side of the semaed squares and diagonally across the middle of the plain squares.

When I came to piecing them together I thought it looked very drab and dark and I wasn.t that pleased with the effect, not for the four girls.  It would have been better for a boys room but not with the embroidery on.  So I put it away and had a think for a couple of days and came up with a solution.  I decided to firstly make the quilt smaller so just had it 5 x 6 squares, and then I cut out some smaller squares (4 inches I think) and sewed these onto the fronts of the plain squares.  I used nice bright girly fabrics in a 100% cotton left over from other projects.  Then I sewed the completed squares into strips and the strips into the top of the quilt.  I found when sewing the strips together I just sewed along one edge of a square at a time finishing off and startiing again on the next so that I didnt sew down any of the cross ways seams or they might not rag properly.

This is a photo of how it looks so far.  I am pleased with the effect, I have some nice bright coloured buttons to sew on when its finished which I hope will hold it all together.  I am going to look our for some pretty duvet covers to use as backing for them.

Finished Item

I managed to find some nice fabric for the backing and finished off the quilt the other night.  I have sewn a quite large, very primitive looking running stitch just inside the outer edge of the squares with the coloured fabric sewn on to join the layers together.  It is not proper quilting as I had already sewn the waddding to the back of the denim squares so I only needed to attach the backing fabric.  I sewed the buttons on randomly on the other squares.

I used some strips of fabric I had left over from the Oriental quilt for the edging as the red colours went with the fabrics I had used.  Then when it was finished I put it through the washing machine and then trimmed the raggy bits to make it look a bit better.

I am quite happy with the finished product although it is quite a heavy item now with the denim being quite weighty in itself.  I think this would look nice as a throw across the back of a settee or something rather than as a quilt on a bed.