Work in Progress: Denim Quilt
This will be the first of many art related posts yet to come. I will continue to document my hiking/traveling adventures on here as well but since quilting and fabric related hobbies have become a bigger part of my life I will start to add them on here as well. Since not many people read my this blog anyways I don’t think I will get much backlash. So let’s begin!
On Thursday last week I took a middle of the week day off and attended my very first quilt related workshop along with a bundle of other Quilter’s Anonymous Guild members.
The workshop, being held over Zoom, went as smooth as one would expect. There were some technical problems at the beginning with some members not being able to join the meeting and then the instructor’s internet mysteriously went out halfway through. Luckily none of these issues were problems for very long.
Niko making sure my fabric doesn’t run away
The workshop started with a tutorial on how to deconstruct jeans in order to get the most fabric out of each pair. I like how one can use almost every piece of the cut up jeans but there is definitely much more waste than if you were to use quilting cotton or any fabric by the yard.
Of course I had to be “unique” and picked jeans that were not the traditional blue. Doing so made following along with the workshop a little tricky because the instructor assumed one could get more than one colour out of a single pair of pants. In my case that was not true and no matter how hard I looked I could only come up with the same shade of grey, black, brown or tan from each piece I had. So. Instead of deconstructing two pairs, I got to rip apart four pairs of jeans in the same amount of time. Needless to say, my thumb was a little bruised after cutting that much denim.
Once I got enough of each color cut up, we were to follow a pattern that Sandra Johnson (our instructor) had designed. I was originally didn’t really like the pattern and was considering picking out a different one but I am really glad that I ended up sticking with it because it somehow just fits the patchwork-y vibe perfectly.
I finished my first block about an hour after the workshop ended. Sewing denim together is hard! I have a new found respect for the jeans in my closet. I took extra care with this block to make sure all the points lined up and I think it turned out pretty well! Its mostly square and it lies super flat.
Since I started working on this quilt during a pretty structured workshop with a start and end time I decided to try and intentionally record how long it takes me to complete this whole quilt. I am hoping to make this a practice for future projects as well.
I tried really hard on the first block to keep all the seams aligned and the points matching. On the second block I threw a little more caution to the wind and it kind of shows… but only if you look really closely and only if I tell you where to look (which I do not plan on doing). I keep telling myself that I would rather get something finished than worry about every single point be perfect. One day I will believe myself 😹.
On the second block I switched up the lightest color to give some variety when the whole quilt comes together. Just looking at the singular blocks they look pretty similar…
I am really excited to see how the next two blocks come together. I am going to try and use the other shades of black and grey I collected. Hopefully the different shades will give the quilt a bit more depth when it is put together.
I think that I can make at least two more blocks and a border with the material I have already. I will consider using quilting cotton if I run out of the brown/tan/beige denim but fingers crossed that I don’t have to do that.
This project looks like it will take me a while so there will undoubtably be at least one more work in progress post about it before I have it finished.