Jeans Redo

Way back in the 90's I made quite a few flannel comforters for Christmas one year.  I had a lot of flannel scraps left over.  I also had a lot of my husband's jeans that were too worn out or stained for him to wear anymore.  I decided to make a jeans comforter with a flannel back.  It turned out to be one of the family's favorite blankets, but my son especially loved it.

Fast forward almost 30 years.  The comforter long ago lost it's backing of flannel from repeaded washings and heavy use.  The jeans top was relegated to a basement cabinet and pretty much forgotten about.  Until a few months ago.  Darling Son asked me if I still had it.  I said yes but it was in pretty sorry shape.  He said he was wondering about it.  That got me to thinking....  What about a redo?  I could trim off the edges where the flannel and batting (oh, my, did I really use high loft 100% polyester batting?) hung in shreds.  I would also need to pick out all the little crochet thread ties that used to hold it all together.  Then could I possibly put it on Gemma?

Over the last few weeks I have rough trimmed the edges and painstakingly removed all the little threads.  This was what it looked like:

It has seen a lot of love and really was used.  There are holes and tears, and stains, most of which were ink from Dear Hubby's job.  And did I mention, it isn't really squared up?  Cutting myself a lot of slack on that one, because it was the early 90's and I had not made many quilts, and I had two very young children at the time.

My plan was to find a backing, layer it with batting (the good stuff this time!), put another piece of material over the batting that will play peekaboo in the more holey sections of the top, then lastly put the top on.

Backing is a striped sheet I thought would play nice because it has been washed a lot and won't shrink.  The jeans top is not going to shrink and it would not be good if the back did.  Here it is loaded on Gamma:

The batting went on next, and then another sheet, this one also had been washed many times.

And finally the top.  It is going to have to float, because it needs to be adjusted as I quilt it.  Remember, it's not really squared up... :)

I decided to use my new grid stencil and put diagonal wavy lines on it, going around any tears a few times - pretty loosy goosy quilting, but it should really secure the layers together.

Wish me luck!  Oh, and I have no clue how I am going to bind this sucker, but I'm sure I will figure something out!  Hey, keep a secret if you see my son - he is going to get this for Christmas this year.