Jean Rag Quilt

I've been collecting my dh's discarded jeans for several years.  The goal was to get enough old denim from them to make a rag quilt.  I'm tired of looking at the pile of old jeans and decided, "It Was Time".

I fear that there are too many black pairs.  Not much variety in that!

As I was planning how to go about assembling my quilt there were a few things to work out.  How large a square should each block be?  Should it even be square? Maybe bricks would be better?  With what fabric to back it? And should it be like a traditional Rag Quilt with batting inserted in each block?

After cutting blocks of varying sizes I decided to machine embroider each block.  This would allow me to learn more about my sewing machine by using the machine embroidery designs that came on a cd with the machine. I wouldn't have ever used most of the designs, otherwise.  I can see how the designs sew out and learn to troubleshoot some of the stuff that always arises when learning something new. The designs look much better in person than on the little picture in the booklet that accompanies the cd.

Here are just a few of the embroidered pieces

So far I've done 20 different designs, one from each different collection

When each block has been embroidered, I'll square them and determine whether I want them to be uniform in size.  The backing is going to be a checked flannel fabric.  The weight of this quilt makes me think that no batting will be necessary.

I'll keep you posted as the project progresses.

The beauty of this kind of project is that because it is a "picnic quilt" I won't stress if the embroidery isn't perfectly lined up.  It is quite freeing, actually.