Jeans are my favorite clothes to upcycle. The fabric is durable and can be used for practical things like hand bags or pillows but also for decoration items like the denim fish I made last year. The material can be treated with all kind of techniques and it’s easy to sew. I started to collect old jeans over 15 years ago. Back then I cut them up and only kept the leg parts without pockets, seams etc. Nowadays, I never throw away all those wonderful pieces. Seams and belt loops are my new best friends among garment parts. :)
For this small art quilt I used a lot of those pieces along with some rusty finds. The inspiration came from the mixed media collage “d-pending” I created last summer for a color challenge. I liked the combination of blue with rusty orange and wanted to make something with this color scheme again.
Don’t the belt loops make a great fringe? As you can see one of them was a little rebellious and wanted to show its back. :)
I wove some inside seams in a piece of rusty mesh. The metal grid was then sewn onto the quilt by machine.
The striped fabric is from an inside jeans pocket. I dyed it to match the color of the thread that was used for the seams and belt loops.
Have you ever upcycled an old pair of jeans? What did you make out of it?
I will send the quilt over to the following great parties:
Saturday Sparks at Pieced Pastimes
Talk of The Town at Knick of Time
