Putting on Old Jeans for the Festival

My entry for this Bloggers' Quilt Festival is this quilt which regular visitors to my blog will have seen before.

Each block is 16" square and the whole is 258" around the perimeter, so I'm entering in the large quilt category.

This quilt has been in the queue for a number of years really as I've collected an ever bigger pile of the family's jeans. I guess most people have a kind of jeans hierarchy? One has a pair of newish smartish jeans and then a Saturday pair or two, often mended and comfortably dented and then a gardening/ walking the dog (who's good at retrieving a slobbery sandy ball) pair and then, if you're me, a painting or irredeemably dirty job pair, then I often cut them off for shorts for a season or two, then they can become a quilt. Sometimes this full cycle is interrupted in the case of kids who grow out of them before they're worn out and they wait to be passed on to another sibling or cousin. Sometimes by this time we've looked away and the next kid is suddenly too big, or the jeans are too straight, or too flared or just not the thing. Then- they can become a quilt; or even if the whole jeans are generally bitsy, some parts can be salvaged.

This block was inspired by the ceiling in our local concert hall

Gratuitous shot of our Lab/ GSP cross: Pepi

It was quick to piece and put together and I like the way you can see our history in them. These are all items we've worn, with the exception of the stripe, which is left over fabric from a shift dress I made our daughter when she was young and the lightest dusty blue which was another from my stash.
I deliberately left the unpicked seam lines showing and some bits with worn knees or even the odd stain.

This lovely heavy quilt was just going to be a family sofa quilt, but our son really liked it and his 21st quilt wasn't quite going according to plan, so I was happy to allow this one to fit the bill. It'll be lovely and warm for his student flat. I had planned to back it with a vintage floral brushed cotton gifted from my mum's stash, but Sam preferred this subtly textured gray, so I'll put the floral to use on another quilt in due course. I added a back pocket from an old favourite pair of my husband's and the label is tucked inside the pocket

I quilted in the ditch around each piece and with a double line around each block in jeans yellow to echo the binding, which is a Carolyn Friedlander Botanics print

Happy Festival viewing! I missed the last one, so am looking forward to viewing the entries this time.