Birthday Quilt – Denim Refashion

Hey there everybody!

I’ve been really busy the last few days.

My youngest child turned 8 on Tuesday!

I wanted to make him something super special for his birthday, but wasn’t sure what it should be.

While eating lunch with my kids a week ago, my little guy mentioned that he wanted a quilt like the Christmas present I made my oldest son (for a reminder check out the “Oh My Aching Back: Denim Refashion” post that I pictured it in).

I knew how much work this gift would be (as I’ve already made two of them), but I was up for the challenge!

There were plenty of old jeans and jean scraps to make up the front of the quilt, but I wasn’t sure what I would use for the backing or  batting.

For the first two quilts, I used a sheet for the backing, and purchased cotton batting, but I didn’t have any more sheets that needed to be refashioned, and I didn’t feel like going to the store to buy batting.

After taking a look at my fabric stash I found this huge bolt of blue plaid flannel that I had purchased at JoAnn Fabrics a couple of years ago during their Black Friday sale.

I bought a whole bolt of it because it was only $1.00 a yard and I really loved the print. It was intended for matching pajamas for my guys, but I never got around to making them. I used some of it to make the binding on the 2nd quilt that I made for my older son.

I decided to have the flannel serve two purposes, both as the backing and the binding for this quilt. It wasn’t wide enough to fit the width of the quilt, so I cut two strips that were longer and wider (when sewn together). I needed it to overlap so that I could use the excess material to wrap around the edges.

I made sure to pin the two strips together, matching up the pattern on the fabric, so that the seam wouldn’t show, and then sewed them together.

Can’t even see that seam can you?

It took a lot more time doing it that way, but I knew it would look much nicer when finished.

After the backing was all taken care of, I knew I needed to figure out what to use as the batting (or stuffing). I figured I could use fleece, and that would be nice and warm, but it’s also expensive, and I’d rather save the fleece that I have for other projects.

Then I came across this bag of wool fabric that I purchased a long time ago at an estate sale. I’m not sure what I was thinking when I bought it, because it had several stains from having been stored for so long. But it was super cheap, so I must’ve thought I could get some sort of use out of it!

After spreading it out, I realized it was almost big enough, but like the flannel, was longer than necessary but not quite wide enough.

To fix the problem, I chopped off the extra length and used it to sew a couple of panels onto the sides.

Notice the ugly stains?

I knew for this project the stains wouldn’t matter, because they wouldn’t show. Also the fact that the material is wool, would give the quilt extra warmth!

The quilt needed eighty-eight 9″ total jean squares, 11 rows of 8 (or 8 rows of 11, depending on how you look at it!)

I had some squares already cut out, (leftovers from the previous quilt) but I still needed to cut a ton more!

Luckily for me, my son offered to stay up late and help me cut them all out!

How lucky am I to have such a sweet boy? 🙂

After we had enough squares cut out, I arranged them on the floor like so…

Lookin’ good!

I pinned all of the squares together in strips, and then sewed each strip together, one at a time, until there were 8 strips of 11 denim squares. Then I sewed each strip together until it was one giant square!

Good thing his favorite color is blue! 🙂

Now I needed to finish off the quilt. To do so, I grabbed the excess backing and folded it about 1/2″…

I probably should’ve ironed it down, but at this point it was probably 5 a.m. and I didn’t feel like ironing!

Then I folded it 2 1/2″ over the top of the denim part…

Nice even edges!

Once the flannel was pinned down all around, I ran it through the sewing machine.

Using a zig zag stitch 🙂

Now the only thing left to do was tack it down…

I used embroidery floss.

After breaking 2 needles and mistaking my hand for a pin cushion several times, the quilt was all done!

All folded up and ready to be wrapped!

The birthday boy was happily surprised!

Oh boy!

After staying up all night to get this thing finished in time for the big day, I was in desperate need of a nap! And let me tell you, it is one heavy, comfy, warm blankie!

zzzzzzzzzz (it looks like he was getting sleepy too).

Thanks for stopping by and checking out the latest post!

If you can’t get enough of the blog, I’d love to connect with you on the Diary of a MadMama Facebook page!

~Jen

Question: What are your favorite homemade gifts you’ve either made or received?

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