Jake's quilt

Jake's quilt is finished. It is a rag quilt made of denim and dark green flannel. It was sewn very quickly, but the finishing took a long time. First, the snipping of the seam allowances took several days, including most of yesterday. Then I had to wash and dry it to get it to fray. I almost thought I'd have to take it to a laundromat, but I finally determined that it was not too big or heavy to do here. So that's what I did today. First I put it in the dryer to try to get a lot of the lint off. I had to literally go downstairs to the laundry room every 10 minutes to empty the lint trap. Then through the wash. I was surprised by the tons of lint (wet lint, no less) that I had to clean out of the machine after. Then I put it through the dryer two more times, both to dry it and remove the excess lint. Again, I had to go downstairs every 10 minutes to empty the lint trap. But then it was finally done!

And now, pictures:

Jake's old jeans, cut to pieces and ready to iron and cut into 7" squares.

Some of my tools: cutting mat, square, long ruler, scissors, cutters, iron, squirt bottle, and sewing machine.

Beginning the stacks of denim squares. I needed 144 total.

All 144 denim and 144 flannel squares.

Those stacks have now been arranged into sammiches of
denim
flannel
flannel
denim
then stacked back together.

I sewed the squares into strips of 12, then started pinning the strips together. Each square is a denim square on top and a flannel square on bottom, with the seam allowance on the "top" denim side, which is the opposite of where you'd usually put it.

Close up of pinning.

Sewing the strips together went fast, but it got trickier as it got more together and heavier.

I didn't take any pictures of the snipping or the washing/drying. I thought about it, though.

FINISHED!!

Close up.

This was a lot of work, and I don't think I want to make another denim quilt, especially a denim rag quilt, but I'm very glad I made this one for my boy. He's sleeping with it tonight. :D