Playing with Denim

I've shown you the top of a Denim Picnic Quilt before, and as we're having a "double-denim double-birthday" house party at our place in January a few more would really help out with the decor for the party.

I've still got a big stack of denim squares cut and had a play with quilt layouts other than the random one in the first quilt top.

Checkerboard:

Diagonal lines:

PS: If anyone has any old jeans they're getting rid of I'd love to have them to add to my denim collection so I can make some more denim quilts.

Denim picnic blanket top

The other evening I stitched together the denim quilt top I planned the layout of last week. I chain pieced the squares and it came together remarkably quickly - much quicker than my couch quilt last year which took days and days and days; I highly recommend chain piecing!!

Now I need to decide about backing fabric. I'd like to use something at least a bit waterproof, like you get on the back of bought ones, but I don't have the first idea where I'd get that kind of fabric. Any ideas?

In also tossing up whether to put wadding in the middle or just have the two outside layers. I don't know if having the wadding would make it too bulky.

Plenty of blues...

As I mentioned before, I've been collecting old jeans from friends and cutting them into 6 inch squares. I have now got more than enough for my planned picnic blanket. Here's what (some of) the squares look like laid out.

I think this should make it a good size, I figure I'll start sewing it together and then see how it looks.

Does anyone have any insight on good picnic blanket sizes?

A case of the distractions...

I certainly have a case of the distractions at the moment - I have far too many things on the go. Last night I had the need (yes, need) to cut into the pile of old jeans in my sewing corner. My logic was that a pile of squares of denim takes up much less space than a pile of jeans (and incidentally I was right).

So I set about cutting 6 inch squares out of the good parts of 4 pairs of jeans that would otherwise have gone into the bin due to holes in unfortunate places or broken zippers etc. I found I got an average of 18 squares from each pair (although that would depend on the previous owner of the jeans - jeans from someone taller than me would give more squares obviously!). I also cut some strips that could potentially be joined to make 6" squares.

I now have 75 squares, and I think I'll need maybe about twice as much again (depending on what size quilt I make out of them). I thought they'd make a good picnic quilt, nice and hardy! And no, surely there's no such thing as too many quilts? My housemate thinks there is, but I'm convinced she's wrong...