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