The old jeans had been in the closet for several years. They had frayed knees and stains and worn spots. There were so many pairs that the container I had chosen to store them in had become too small.
Over several days, I dulled a pair of scissors and at least one rotary cutter blade as I cut the jeans into usable bits. It turned out that storing old jeans without all of the seams and zippers intact made the mountain of denim in the closet just a wee bit smaller.
I cut some squares at 6 1/2″ and some at 8″. I used the smaller squares to make cozy lap quilts. (I’ve got four tucked away to give as gifts and will share photos of those at another time. There are two more draped over the ironing board waiting for me to be just bored enough to want to sew backings for them and deal with the tying and binding.) The 8″ squares make perfect potholders.
This weekend I finished four potholders. I have two more pinned and waiting for binding. For the batting, I used one layer of Warm and Natural and one layer of Insul-Bright. The binding came from a jellyroll I received as a gift during a quilt hop. I’m fairly certain this jellyroll was just made up of stuff the quilt shop was trying to get rid of as none of the strips really “matched.” That’s okay, though, because I’ve still enjoyed using them. There were several hippy-ish strips that were perfect to use as binding for the potholders I made for my nephew and his wife when they got married. I was thrilled that there was an identical strip left over to use for one of my own potholders. (That’s the top one in the photo.)
The binding gets a little tricky to connect at the ends when using the binding tool that I favor, but I made it work and things only look a tiny bit wonky on the backside.
Lazy Saturday Quilts 