An Interesting Recycled Quilt

When I was in North Carolina in June, there was this great mall art exhibit of recycled materials.  This quilt was in the exhibit and I'm sorry I don't have the artist's name.  I think it is a really interesting use of reused fabric, especially jeans details.

It made me want to start saving old jeans to cut up, but then I realized I save too much stuff and really shouldn't add any more clutter.  Maybe I could save one or two pairs of jeans...

Jeans into a Chatelaine

I love a good challenge!  My local American Sewing Guild chapter had a denim challenge at our annual meeting.  You had to take a pair of jeans and make something from it.  They didn't specify a size, so I used 12 month old baby jeans.  They had nice embroidery already on them.

 This was all that was left.

I constructed a chatelaine to hold my sewing tools.  There were already plenty of pockets, so I didn't follow my pattern, but I did take the general idea of it.

I added the heart and button in the left picture above.  I also added some fabric from a denim skirt as the backing and the neck section.

There are 7 pockets (the lower right is a flap, but no pocket).  It was a bit difficult sewing through all the layers on the side seams.  If I were to make another one, I would use slightly larger jeans like size 18 months.  Then I would cut off the bulkiest parts.  I am quite pleased with the results, plus I won 1st place for the accessories category!

How Jeans Are made

This article/video, reported on Craftzine shows how jeans are made.  WOW!  It takes them under 13 minutes to sew a pair of jeans!  It takes me way longer, but it is very satisfying.  I love the look people give me when I say I made my own.  Have you sewn jeans?  The pattern I use is Butterick 6437.  I have sewn jeans using this pattern using white denim, blue, chambray, cotton print, linen, etc.