Denim Chenille Quilt Made From Old Jeans

I made this about 9 years ago, but accidentally deleted the post from my blog when I was cleaning up and reorganizing.  I found the photos of the process recently, and decided to repost them.  

This is a heavy quilt, great for picnics, and can easily be made in a week-end.

 With three boys, we had plenty of outgrown/worn out jeans.  Even the ones with the knees ripped out and stained worked for this - the backs of the jeans were still good material.

See the t-shirt off to the right in the photo above?  It was our youngest FAVORITE t-shirt when he was 5.  You know the one, the one that you can barely get through the wash before he has it back on...  it had a denim airplane on it that I thought would make a great center design for this quilt.

You can choose the size for your squares - just make sure they are all the same. 

I think these were 6x6

 

The t-shirt design cut out for the center

Next I laid the squares out to find a design that I liked.

The back of the quilt, and what makes the "chenille" for this, is flannel.  You need one flannel square for each denim one.  To start sewing, you layer FOUR pieces.

Layer 1.  one denim piece upside down

Layer 2.  one flannel piece right side up

Layer 3 - A second denim piece right side down

Layer 4 - A second flannel piece right side up

So you are sewing one side, through four pieces of fabric at one time - just one seam.

At least half an inch seem allowance.

If you look at the photo above, you can see the pieces sewn together - first you will have just two squares together, like the bottom row.    

It goes together quickly from here. 

Once I had all the squares sewn into blocks of two, I used the strip quilting method to sew them into 4 rows, as shown above. Then it was simply sewing the 4 rows together.

Once it is all sewn together, you need to snip through the denim & flannel that are standing up, about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch all the way around every seam. 

 I did not measure.  This is not an exact science, just start snipping, being careful not to cut through your seams.

 A closer look at my cuts.

After this is done, through the blanket in the washing machine, wash, and dry.  It will come out similar to this:

It's the washing that gives you that "chenille" look.

A view of the back:

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