first let me say i really enjoy reading everything on this board.
i could really use your help as i know everyone has such terrific ideas and skill.
i am trying to organize a quilting bee with my co-workers making quilts from old jeans. we will be making them for charities, such as salvation army, family and children services or the women's shelter.
i need patterns or ideas to make inexpensive, very easy and fast quilts. most of my co-workers will have very limited sewing experience.
also do we need to use cotton thread or would it be ok to use a less expensive thread.
any help with the above would be greatly appreciated.
also can anyone tell me how to cut up the jeans to get the most fabric out of it.
thank you in advance for your help.

Do they have to be made out of jeans? It's a lot of extra work cutting patches from jeans (you have to deconstruct the jeans first), plus the fabric is often tough and therefore tiring to cut through. Jeans quilts end up being very heavy too.

Charity quilts are utility quilts (utility quilts can be pretty!), so there's no need to use cotton thread.

For beginners, the best patterns are probably those that do not require matching of seams. Bricks would be one. Cut rectangles of fabric, sew them together end-to-end. Rows are arranged so that the joined bricks of one row are in the middle of the bricks of the upper row.

I was in the local JoAnn's today & they had a rag blue jean quilt that was just awesome. Some of the blocks were done with the front pocket portion. They used flannel for the back.

Siss,
Google & Yahoo Search Free Denim Quilt Patterns & you'll find several sites with patterns. Determining which pattern to make is a big priority, so take a little time & go with a simple one. Some of the workers may want to use different sized blocks & shapes. Good luck to all.

I checked out some blue jean quilt websites. Here's one:
http://www.equilters.com/library/jea..._gallearl.html

She mentioned that she now makes all her jeans quilts with 1/2-inch seams for durability. Also, it sounds as if you need to be careful and use jeans needles when sewing denim. Those are thicker, stronger needles with sharp points that make penetrating the denim easier. With beginners, I would worry about them breaking needles while sewing denim.

thanks prism99, yes denium is our choice as it is free. bricks looks like a easy pattern.

thanks everyone for suggestions. was wondering if we could make the brick pattern or other pattern, but rag the outside edge instead of putting on binding. this would be a lot quicker. would we have to make the outside edge larger to accommodate the edge. do you think this would look ok. please remember we are not quilters, including ME.

Would you still have a backing fabric on the quilt?

yes, we will be putting flannel on the back

make sure you wash and dry the flannel twice first...it will usually shrink a lot and it will pull the denim out of shape!! You can sew a really narrow zig zag around the whole outside of the quilt a 1/2 inch in and the flannel and the denim will rag. I might even go around it twice, to make sure the seam stays good. I would use a good 1/2 in seam to construct the quilt and a very narrow zig zag to seam the quilt with, too. The zig zag stitch will be stronger and help prevent the flannel from fraying out in the seam line.