Denim Circle Quilt

During our fall vacation to some wonderful places in California we stayed at Doug's cousin's house near San Francisco. His cousin talked about a circle quilt that she had made. It got my mind thinking. I thought of all the denim (aka - old blue jeans) I have stashed away. Then I thought of making a denim circle quilt. The thought took hold and I just couldn't shake it.

So even though I have lots of flannel to stitch together and the edging to crochet, even though I started crocheting a baby blanket and it is only partially complelted, even though I had a detailed and time consuming particular project that I had to get done for a particular Christmas gift for some particular people, even though I had a crafty/sewing project to make for the grandkids, and heck I might even need to do things like some Relief Society stuff, clean the house, cook dinner, and the necessary and never ending laundry - I still came home and immediately started the new denim circle quilt.

First I decided on the size of the circles and I made a template. Don't ask me for my method - just trial and error. I dug my box of old jeans out and started tracing circles. Then I cut the circles out - did you know that denim is hard to cut? Especially when you cut through those daggone thick seams. I cut about a bazillion denim circles. Well let me be more exact - math time - ummmm 20 x 15 = 300 - yes 300 denim circles. Yeah, after that my hands ached! But I was not deterred.

Then I started pinning the 300 denim circles to some of the ugliest flannel you will ever see. I got a great deal on it at a store in Utah. But it works fine for this project. I pinned the circles onto the flannel and then stitched around the circle thus joining the 2 pieces of fabric. Last I trimmed the flannel. Then I had 300 double sided circles.

Well the project goes on and on by joining the circles using straight seams that became strips. Then another straight seam and you end up with panels. Fold the seams over and stitch each piece down. Zig zag stitch over each unfinished edge. Finally you end up with the finished denim circle quilt.

It ends up looking like a cathedral window pattern - the front having the small piece of colored flannel showing and the back having the curved stitch lines showing on the plain denim. It looks nice.

Three things I want to share about my denim circle quilt:

1. I can't belive I cut over 600 circles - oh my aching hands

2. I still have more denim

3. I ended up using 3 different pieces of flannel

4. The blanket is very heavy! It easily weighs over 10 pounds!