How many pair of jeans for a quilt?
 

My local SA has women's jeans for 50 cents a pair. They appear to be 'normal' sizes. How many pair would it take to make a lap quilt? I might have cut up a pair of mine tonight to get an estimate.

Make sure you aren't wearing them when you cut them!!

I will be watching this thread since my daughter brought over a bag of jeans a couple of weeks ago. Both my daughters want jeans quilts for camping and outdoor use.

Doesn't it depend on how many holes they have?

I made 2 jeans quilts. I found size 56 & 60 mens new at a goodwill several years ago. I bought 20 pairs and striped the legs into 2 1/2 strips for a log cabin. I rolled the strips and they filled with extra a large postal mailing box. I only used half. Quilt was very heavy. The second one I used yardage.. you will find out why later.... good luck and don't forget to use a size 14 or 16 jeans needle for the constuctiomn.

For a lap quilt I used 12 pair...some were men's and some were teenage size. The quilt was 54x68 when finished. Used a light weight fleece on the back.

I thought you would like to see the one that I did with denim yardage and some of the left over strips from the 1st quilt. I don't have a finished picture, but this is the layout. I put borders in the blue denim and then tied it with flat red heart buttons. It turned out great! I will have to see if I can get my son to take a picture of it, but here it is pre assembly
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Get the largest size jeans you can. Use decorative pockets or designs from them. The larger size blocks mean less seams and less weight. I'd say , start out with a dozen or so jeans and see how much you get after cutting them up. Do one first and see how you feel about it.

I like Log Cabin - that's my favorite layout. I have some jeans in my car, but they are size 1s, so I don't see getting much denim from them. The ones at the Salvation Army looked larger. I am concerned about cutting them. My son is here for the week end. I should run and get the jeans and put him to work. I am thinking of the quilt with demin circles and bright fabrics in the windows in a large lap size. I want to use the fronts to make aprons for the church bazaar and the legs for the quilt.

One thing you have to remember about cutting into the legs of the jeans - GRAIN LINE! It is so easy just to follow the side seams or the inseams when cutting the strips, but you have to treat them just like fabric and remember the grain line. If you cut following the inseam, your strips will have a slight bias edge and if they were not cut on the grain with the side seam, the same will also be true. You may loose more fabric than you realize.. hens yardage for the next one ;)

I'm still collecting old jeans for an eventual quilt. I wish our thrift stores would sell "un-sellable" jeans for $0.50 each or something! I'd buy them!

When I found mine, I was at a Goodwill Outlet store, the last chance for anything that doesn't make it into the store. These were brand new jeans in sizes 50 to 60 that were for employees of the brand new IKEA that had just opened up. Guess they overbought for the 'larger' man, but I snagged about 12 pairs, paid by the pound and it was something like a dollar a pair. Had a wonderful time cutting them up! LOL

Just a word of warning....


Do Not, Repeat, DO NOT Use your home machine to wash a jean quilt. I blew one up that was less than a month old with all the little strings the ragged edges of the jeans gave off.

No idea how many pairs I used. I got all mine off Freecycle and at the flea market for like $1.

Thanks for letting us know

Here's a Blue Jeans Quilt Pattern
 

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Here's a pdf. of a Blue Jean's Quilt Pattern for a lap quilt. I also have another, larger pattern, but I don't think that's what you want.

If you want to wash the quilt, either take it to a laundromat that has an oversized washer, or to the cleaners and ask for a wash in their oversized washer. Be specific! Tell the cleaners (to give them) what soap to use, and to wash in cold water, or they won't! I have washed one in a laundromat in an oversized washer, in cold water and quilt soap, and then put it in the dryer on low just long enough to get the "sopping" wet out of it. Then I took it home and laid it on a clean sheet outdoors to finish drying, having to turn it a couple of times of course.

Best of luck to you!

Home washers and jeans quilts don"t mix!

Now, I did wash all of the jeans in the washer, HOT water, COLD rinse with NO fabric softer just to make sure that all of the shrinkage and nasties from the location I purchased from was either dead or gone.

The 1st one I made, I made in the style of a rag quilt, butted wrong sides together with the flannel backing and warm and natural batting (wrong move, tell you why in a moment) I cut all of the squares and then embroidered a simple quit pattern on the sandwich with my embroidery machine. Butted wrong sides together and then sewed together so the raw seams were on the top. So far, so good. Used strips of jeans for the binding, and then took it to the laundromat and used one of the large commercial washers and boy am I glad I did!

I started the machine and let it run. When I took the quilt out of the machine, it was one big ball of strings!! I remember someone telling me that I had destroyed my quilt.. LOL Little did they know. So I sat on the floor of the laundromat for almost 30 minutes pulling off strings. I had a huge ball when I was done and the looks on peoples faces was horror. I put it in the dryer and let it run for 4 cycles, took it out and it was still damp. I was a work, running back and forth from two doors down to check on the quilt every 20 minutes. I finally took it and laied it out in the back of my truck in the sun and let it bake.

This was only my second quilt, I knew nothing about quilting other than I liked to do it. The weight of the quilt when I took it out of the washer was tremendous and when my son used it when he went camping, it kept him nice and warm. I dreaded when it came time to wash it, 'cus off to the laundromat I went and every time I washed it, more string would come out. Did I tell you it was my second quilt? Did I tell you that I didn't reinforce the stitching by using a tipple stitch? No, well I didn't. After about 5 years of washing, it started to develop holes at some of the seams, no fault of my son, just the fact that denim ravels and unless you encase the seams, it will fall apart, but I didn't know this. The quilt hung in the sewing machine store that I worked at for about 6 months and I had several offers to purchase it, but it was for my son. I had to display it because I did a lot of the work at the store in-between customers and this was the agreement I made with the store owner, display for 6 months or not work on it.. I caved and displayed, but we sold a lot of the machine that it was made on :) LOL

The 2nd one, the one in the picture above, has all the seams incased, NO batting and has held up very well with no strings. Now I stick to cotton, nice and thin, light weight and easy to handle.

Some of the downfalls for using jeans, my hands were blue, the bed of my machine was blue, my iron and ironing board was blue and if I was wearing light colors when I was working on it, you could see blue on my front, I had strings and blue lint everywhere! You will need help putting it together when it gets larger (as in someone to help hold it as you pass it through your machine)
Some of the benefits for using jeans, the quilt will outlast dirt! It is great for camping and you can treat it just as you would a pair of jeans. Extremely durable unless you make it with exposed seams. Very heavy and Very warm and by the time you are done making it, you will have done your workout for the day!

Don't get me wrong, I love the two that I have created and everyone should experience making at least one in their lifetime, but be forewarned, it will take a bit of doing to make this masterpiece, but every time my son goes camping, I know he will be warm and my arms will be around him as he sleeps in the middle of nowhere :)