Andrew's USA Quilt
Two weeks out from Christmas I realised I should probably do something for my brother for Christmas...now there's an idea...
He had a pair of jeans he was quite attached to. He got them on his first trip to America, at that great bastion of American culture: Walmart. I'd patched them and repaired them a few times due to rips and tears, seams coming undone, etc. The fabric at the back was starting to wear through - you could see through bits of it. They wouldn't have lasted more than two washes and it was beyond my skill and patience to re-weave the fabric.
So I decided to destroy them.
I had a vague, half formed idea of what I wanted. So naturally I plunged in without any further planning. (When will I ever learn??) The first cut I made into the jeans was along the waistband, which meant it was undisguisable and there was no turning back.
I cut out the useable bits of denim and patched them together into a 6 1/2 inch wide strip. (Not entirely coincidentally, that's also the width of my quilting ruler.) It ended up measuring about 6 metres long. This would be the border.
The jeans strip laid out on our dining room table.
For the centre panel I hunted down some dark blue denim we've had lying around for years. I think at one point it was used to make sleeping bag covers. I think at this point I tried to figure out how big I could make the centre with the proportions of the golden ratio if the border could be a maximum of 5.5m (to allow for corners). It ended up being rather academic as the denim shrank like buggery in the wash and it was much smaller than that anyway.
Then I found a simple map of the US online. It had state boundaries and names, but nothing else. I enlarged it to about a metre wide and printed it out on 45 sheets of A4 paper. Then came the tedious task of taping it all together...then the even more tedious task of realising half way through that I'd matched up the edges the wrong way so having to perform the tedious task of untaping everything before revisiting the prior tedious task of the initial taping. Ugh.
Then I drew a rough line of Andrew's road trip, vaguely trying to match the states properly. I've failed miserably, no doubt, but I think he understands where I meant anyway.
And things were about to get significantly harder.
I safety pinned the map to the denim. Many, many safety pins. I figured I could do a straight stitch through the paper onto the fabric, then rip the paper away leaving only the stitching. Nice and simple...in theory.
The map pinned to the denim, ready to stitch.
In practice, it was the hardest sewing I have ever done. It was quite difficult to bunch up the fabric I wasn't using out of the way because of the paper, as well as sewing the paper and the denim without it slipping all over the place. I broke three needles in the space of 3 hours. The thread broke more times than I care to think about. I contemplated throwing the sewing machine out the window, but didn't think that would be a good long term solution. My left elbow started to ache from trying to force the paper & fabric around the right way. Eventually through sheer bloody mindedness I got that part done. Pulling the paper off was also annoying, though less annoying than the stitching. grrrrrrr.
Once the paper was off, I satin stitched over the guiding stitches - white for the border and red for the trip. No broken needles there, so that was nice.
You know, Washtington DC used to be my favourite part of America. This project has made me change my mind. I have a renewed appreciation for the Canadian border between Washtington state and Minnesota. It was significantly easier to stitch.
Once that particular nightmare was over, I added a 5cm red border then attached the jeans border around that. To back it I found some red denim that we'd also had for years. For batting I just used some cotton flannelette to reduce bulk. I machine quilted around the map and both sides of the red border.
Dad then suggested tying on coins...he scrounged any US coins he could get his hands on and drilled two holes in each of them. There's three for Colorado, one for Las Vegas, one for New Orleans (every time Andrew tells me the way I say that one isn't American enough, I threaten to say it in French ;-), Georgia, South Carolina, and Washington DC. The pennies between Washington and Colorado represent all the times the car broke down on the way back. :-P
In the end I was quite pleased with the way it turned out. All the features of the jeans I wanted to keep have made it in - the pockets, the fly, the waistband, the hammer loop, the "Wrangler" label, the frayed cuffs and the mobile pocket.
The quilt "label", such as it is.
"Little Andrew's Big Trip. Sophie J. Kunze. Christmas, 2003."
And a little picture of the car: Myrtle, the Slow Arsed Turtle.
When he opened it on Christmas Day it was a big surprise. I understand that when he first saw it he thought I'd made him a pair of jeans and thought, "I don't wear red." ::snicker:: I mentioned in the card that I had wrecked his jeans. I don't think he's too distraught. (Though I have been warned away from any other pants he has.)
