Tutorial: DIY Denim Blanket From Old Blue Jeans

Here’s the challenge with piecing together bits of scrap fabric to make something new….

 

The above photo means being precise and matching up all kinds of corners.  I’m not precise, and the corners didn’t match up.  Although I did have a lot of fun making it with Elizabeth (and quilting it with Carla), I vowed never again.

This, on the other hand, is even more time consuming than cutting out all of those 4 inch squares:

This one isn’t mine.  I’m not THAT crazy!  (And it's actually just a pillow.)

My solution is this:

Because you only have to be precise in cutting one side of each piece, it goes much faster.  Because each strip is all the same height, sewing them all together goes much faster.  It's a great first project for someone with a new serger.

Here’s how to do one yourself.

You will need:

• 10-12 pairs of blue jeans.
• Sharp scissors
• A serger

Note: The number of jeans is an estimate.  I had some scraps from my denim picnic blanket, but then, some of the jeans I used were stained or ripped so I didn’t use all of them.

Cut up blue jeans.  I kept the pockets, as I used one as a rectangle in this blanket and the rest will come in handy someday. 

 Discard the inseams, zippers, hems, etc. (I donate mine.  A local charity that has a thrift store sells unwearable clothing to a paper company, and so I label it “rags” and drop it off to go in with all the other cloth getting recycled.)

Iron the pieces smooth.

Cut the lighter denim into 4-inch sections.   Cut those sections into random lengths.   I tried to avoid cutting anything 4x4ish so that I wouldn’t get confused as to which way was up.

Cut the darker denim into 8 inch sections. Cut those sections into random lengths.   Again, I tried to avoid cutting anything 8x8ish so that I wouldn’t get confused as to which way was up.

 
You’ll end with two piles like this

Sort them into three or four piles by size.  This is so you can avoid putting similarly sized pieces next to each other.

Then take two pieces, each of a contrasting size but both either dark or light, and stack them one on top of the other, putting right sizes together.  (Right sides together = the bottom one with the outer fabric facing up and the top one with the outer fabric facing down.  Think of it like a kiss.)  I tried to avoid putting the same color of denim next to each other. When you are working with the lighter color, you can make the inside of the jeans into the right side if you like, in order to avoid having two of the same color next to each other.

Continue this process, stacking the pairs on top of one another.

Then run the piece through your serger, sewing two together at a time.  Don’t stop to tie off or anything—just run them all together.  You’ll get a long streamer that looks like this

Cut the thread between the pairs.

Pair up the pairs!  You’ll then have another stack next to your serger, but this time when you sew the pairs together the resulting sections will have four pieces each instead of two.

You guessed it—sew the four pieces together to get sections of eight.

Soon you’ll have one long piece.  (As in, perhaps 34 feet or so!)  It will be much longer than your blanket will turn out to be, but don’t worry about that.

Do the same with the second shade of denim.

Do you have enough?  Good question.  I wanted my blanket to be about 7 feet long and about 4 or 4.5 feet wide.  So one row of 8 inches plus one row of 4 inches would be about 12 inches, if you ignore seam allowances for the moment.  (Seam allowance = fabric length lost in the seam when two pieces are sewn together. It’s not much but it adds up.)

So you would think I’d need about 7 rows of both shades to get a 7 foot blanket.  Seam allowances eat up a lot, though, plus you lose some from cutting to even up your rows, and what with one thing and another, I did 9 rows each (18 total), for a blanket that was about 7.25 feet long.  I had enough for 4.5 feet wide by the time I stopped piecing.  So I had one strip about 40.5 feet long and 8-inches high and another one 40.5 feet long and 4 inches high.  About.  Actually I sewed a little more than that, but that’s ok.  I’d rather do that than measure constantly!

But measuring eventually has to be done.

I measured 4.5 feet from the edge of my sewing table and marked the spot with masking tape. (See?  It's to the left of the roll in the photo.) Then I cut 4.5 sections of both light and dark denim, using the handy masking tape roll to hold the fabric in place..  All this will vary depending on the size of your blanket.

Iron again, pressing all the little seams in the same direction.  When you sew the strips together, turn and pin them so that when the serger moves over them, it will press the little seams in the same direction.   This helps your blanket lie flatter.

Sew the 4.5 inch strips to each other in pairs, much like how you sewed the pieces together. Make sure you don’t have any little holes!

Serge the edges.  You are done!

This is what the back looks like.

This is why I’m calling it a blanket, not a quilt.  Quilting is technically the tiny, artful stitches that hold together three layers – fabric, batting, and then fabric.

This is a really easy project for someone's first project on a serger.  I hope this tutorial inspires you to put some fun into your recycling!