Monday, January 28, 2013

Random Recycled Blue

I toyed with the idea of using denim at one point, briefly abandoned it and then when I saw Nicolett's  post about boro, I was really intrigued by this method of recycling garments.

After further contemplation I decided to use denim which brought to mind a picnic quilt I had made for my daughter's family years ago. At my artist husband's insistence, we have been saving worn blue jeans for years, so having enough denim in my stash was no problem. Over  the years I have made handbags and tote bags from denim and my daughter even made a jacket from the leftovers. So using denim was decided.

Now for the design. I started with a photo of the picnic quilt and began manipulating it with Photoshop.

Picnic quilt
Manipulated design
Most of the ensuing designs would have been very labor intensive but I finally created a design which seemed achievable. The picnic quilt was huge in comparison to our 16" x 16" format, so I cropped a section of the design and used it as a point of departure.

When I realized that even the pared down design would require piecing very small bits of fabric, it seemed that if I was to finish on time, I could not meticulously follow the colors and patterns in the cropped design.
So the finished quilt is randomly pieced 2 ½" squares set together in a mostly random pattern.

A few more construction details can be viewed on my  blog.

Random Recycled Blue




6 comments:

  1. I love your random blues Judy! I also like your picnic quilt; you have me inspired to dig out my old denim. I'm headed over to see more at your blog....

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  2. Love the randomness of it- and I can't imagine sewing all that denim! I think this is a fun piece- and I hope you keep that design you came up with in Photoshop, I think it would be worth playing with!

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  3. I love it! so many shades of blue just from old blue jeans. There is a wonderful sense of movement. Piecing with denim - especially that small - must have been interesting - but your results are well worth it!

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  4. That’s a whole lot of different denim blues! I always love that your quilts give so much to see, I keep looking at all those pieces. Fabulous!

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  5. What a lot of piecing! You know that is something I usually avoid - and with denim, too I love the variety of colours you got and so much depth. Great!

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  6. Judy, this is really cool! I love your random piecing!And the others are right, there are some itty bitty looking pieces in there!

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