A few years ago Fauquier County Quilters had a Q^ Retreat (Quilt Up – elevating the ordinary).  The creative team made several projects and gathered ideas about how to reuse fabrics.  There were also challenges with prizes and the retreat brought out some of the best work I’ve seen in decades.

I have continued using some of those ideas.  I love working with shirts, denim, ties, and linens.

For a long time I’ve had the plans for this quilt on my “To Do” list, and I finally finished it and donated this special piece forward.

The quilt itself is a mock Cathedral Window pattern made with recycled jeans and juvenile prints.  When using denim jeans check your labels as 100% cotton works best and for several years now most of the jeans are made with 1% spandex.  Truly, that 1% makes a BIG difference.

The idea is not my original thought…there are simple to follow directions at   http://www.equilters.com/library/jeans/jeans_gallbaros.html.  Sometimes the site doesn’t come up immediately, but if you put “Circle Blue Jeans Quilt” in your search it pops up right away.  If that doesn’t float your boat there is a print pattern available.

Seriously though, you can do this.  I used a coffee can lid as a template and cut my denim and then trimmed my juvenile prints to 4 1/2″ squares.

I did draw a 4 1/2″ square on the wrong side of my denim using a regular ball point pen (no one is going to see this).  The lines are for stitching the circles together.

Make sure you use a needle in your machine made to go through denim.  And remember it is not a race, enjoy the process.

I loved putting this together and used up a lot of my spools of thread that didn’t have a lot left to them.

Personally I think it is kind of cute from both sides.

This is the perfect project for a play quilt to throw on the floor or grass for baby to play on.