Blanket Story

Last week, while I had the opportunity to sew without having to put my machine away at the end of the day, I managed to work on a project that has been in my head for at least a couple of years. When I lived in Alert Bay, I had the good fortune of living near my Aunt Adeline and Uncle Frank. Aunt Adeline has been a dedicated worker at thrift shops for the last twenty years or so. She has always been a really good supply of the best bargains and coolest stuff. While I lived in the "trapper's cabin" in the Bay, I had no television or other distractions, and therefore had all the time in the world to dedicate to my sewing reading. She collected the cotton fabric bits and pieces that were donated to the shop, and held them for my twice monthly visits. On one of the visits, she brought forward three pieces that were close in color and had obviously been made into three of a kind of some sort of pattern. They were cotton, but of roughly the same weight as denim. I took them and added them to my stash, with no real idea what to make with them since they were not the typical quilting cotton.

About six years back, my friend Norma showed me this new type of quilt that used up denim patches and did not require any machine quilting to finish. The blocks were put together with the seams exposed and the process of washing the blanket would eventually produce a curled over look on the "unfinished' side. I was intrigued by the concept and had lots of denim to work with. I also had a huge pile of of fleece remnants that were the leftovers of a number of jean with cotton quilts (about 8 or so).

I cut all of the pieces in the 4.5 inch squares and placed, first the cotton and denim to determine color arrangement. Then I layed the fleece arrangement on top (being careful to turn over each of the cotton pieces, with the right side facing the floor- in preparation for sewing). Then I sewed each block to another to create a line, and then lines to each other. I then stitched the binding on and when that was completed, threw the whole thing in the washing machine. I'd like to say that I only used up fabrics in my stash, but I had to buy the light blue in order to make all of the colors stand out. This photo is of the cotton side.


And this one is of the fleece side- really two different type of color schemes, but in the end , I think that they work well together. I really like the fleece side.


By the end of the weekend, I had a completed blanket (bound and all), I reduced the cotton pieces to less than half their original size, rid myself of all of the fleece bits (except for the red stuff, which just did not fit in with the color scheme), and finally got that blanket out of my head. Maybe there will be a little room for something else in there now.