New Life in Make Modern

I have another quilt in the newest issue of Make Modern magazine, which is now available. Have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy working with the ladies at Make Modern? All three of them (Kristy, Lara and Jane) are wonderful 😊 I love that they keep including my quilts in their beautiful magazine.

My quilt in this issue is New Life, so called because it gives new life to old jeans 😊 It's not very often I'm trendy, but upcycling old clothes is very on trend right now and I just happen to have a whole closet full of old jeans.

I also have an overabundance of scraps of quilting fabric and New Life makes good use of them, too. I used a little bit of everything in this quilt - fabrics from Northcott (including the solid white background), Island Batik, Me + You, plus plenty of others I've had since before I started paying attention to who made which fabrics.

It doesn't actually take many pairs of jeans to cut out all of the pieces, but I wanted lots of variety in the colour of the denim, so I used a lot. Plus, some were from when my boys were really little, with the knees out, which meant I didn't get many pieces from those pairs. It felt great to use the denim for something, rather than just throwing out those unwearable jeans.

I cut out the applique pieces with my new Midnight Edition tailor's shears from LDH Scissors. These scissors are gorgeous and *so* sharp!

Just watch how easily they cut right through the seam on a pair of jeans. My old scissors couldn't cut through that seam at all.

I used Warm and Natural batting and backed the quilt with the same solid white Northcott. The quilting shows up really well in person, but it was soooo hard to photograph! It didn't help that the sun was going down so shadows were unavoidable.

I didn't stitch around the applique pieces until it was time to quilt them. With hundreds of pieces, stitching around them only once made this much faster to finish. I considered using fusible web to attach the flower pieces, but I didn't want the extra stiffness that gives a quilt, especially since the denim is already thicker than quilting cotton and I wanted the quilt to stay as soft as possible. Instead, I just glued them in place using a washable glue stick and hoped they'd stay in place until I could quilt them, which they did (mostly). I did have to re-glue a piece here and there, but it wasn't bad at all. And the quilt is wonderfully soft!

I used Aurifil thread in three colours to quilt the flowers - 2692 for the black flower centers and the darker petals, 2600 for the lighter petals and 2780 for the in-between ones. I quilted just inside each of the applique shapes, with the intention that the denim will fray over time and soften those edges. You can already see that the edges frayed even as I was working on the quilt.

 I quilted quick dot to dot continuous curves using 2600 in the triangles. Then I quilted the background with 2024 and a meandering loop and flower design that was so much fun to stitch.

This brick retaining wall has become a favourite place for me to take pictures. You can see it in my Dresden placemats, Churn baby quilt and Blowing in the Wind posts. Good thing the owners of the property don't mind me draping quilts over their wall!

I finished putting the binding on right after supper a couple of days before the quilt was due to Make Modern, and right before a forecasted stretch of bad weather. I immediately called my friend, Michelle, to see if she was available to help with the photography (like, right now!) and enlisted Zach to help, too. We were out the door less than half an hour after the last stitch went into the binding, lol. Michelle's son came along, too, so the two boys held the quilt while I took pictures and Michelle gave directions. It worked out really well and we were able to get these pictures before the sun got too low.

You can get Make Modern, issue 29 here. Or, sign up for a subscription, either for 6 months or 12 months, and I am sure you won't regret it. And, if you'd like to see everything Make Modern has ever published, you can get an All Access Subscription, which gives you access to all of the previous 28 issues with a 12 month subscription going forward.

I love a good scrappy quilt and New Life is definitely that. Do you have a closet full of old jeans you could turn into a quilt?


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