Recycled Jeans Quilt

(1/2) of a Circle Blue Jeans Quilt

Internet Exploring a couple of mornings ago for inspiration, I stumbled (back) upon this site for Mock Cathedral Windows - a technique for recycling worn out jeans into a useful thing.
I've made pretty good progress after a few hours of sewing.
Half of a quilt!

I had to figure out a couple of the short cuts on my own as the written directions are not as easy to follow as pictures would have been.
So I'm including a few progress shots. (They are out of order of course because I never upload pictures in the right order first time out. I may or may not rearrange them later!)


Some things I figured out:

1. "Right sides together" does mean right side of blue jean fabric - which is actually the BACK of the quilt. (Which I mistakenly figured was the WRONG side.) So DO start out with 2 circles "good sides together." And sew right off the fabric both top and bottom along 1 seam. (Repeat!)
2. You only need to trace the center square sewing lines on about half of the circles. AT FIRST. Later you can draw the missing lines on rows of circles sewn together in a strip. But there is NO SENSE in trying to play the matching game with pairs of circles. Your lines will undoubtedly be out of line on the back. And things go wonky fast if you try sewing down the side that's out of alignment later. I know!
3. Finger press open the seams and stack 2 pairs together. YES. You can sew a strip of circles together and then add them all at once for the next row! I started out doing one circle at a time -Set in Seam style. SLOW!
4. Lift up the stacked pair of circles, making sure the seams match. Follow the opposite side seam line as you sew a strip of circles together.
5. Sew right down the traced lines at the top of the oval windows, without doing more than just touching them. And DON'T MISS the top of the oval or you'll have a hole!!
6. Press Windows open with an iron well before adding the window fabric, and press again once center fabric is laid in place.

After trying a satin stitch zig zag, I didn't like the effect. So I used a fancy stitch on my machine with a first back, then forward criss crossing motion. It's a little too jerky now that the quilt is getting big! Will experiment some more next time before committing myself.

I intend to experiment with a miniture version to see if I can make a Fabric Postcard Quilt for the next round of Postmark'd Art swaps. I've signed up for "Recycled" already so hope it works. Maybe I should have tried it first or I'll be left thinking up a new idea. I'm thinking of trying a dream catcher in one of the "windows" of a postcard, so stay tuned!