Remember the Christmas Secret I had.....

I know... It's been a while, but it's been crazy around here these days. I mentioned that I had been working on a special, secret project for Christmas. They were the gifts I gave to my sisters and my best friend. It was a huge jump out of my comfort zone of scrapbooking, taking pictures and doing easy crafts.

We had the unfortunate event of losing my grandmother in October of 2008, she was a great person, one of the kindest and happiest people that I will ever know in my life. I will be eternally greatful for being able to know her and love her and be loved by her. She was a crafter, she crocheted, she knitted, she sewed and she always had amazing works of art in her house that were all done by her. She was and will always be an inspiration for me. One thing that I will always remember is going for sleepovers at her house and she had these huge jean quilts on the spare bedroom bed and they would be so heavy and I loved to sleep in them because it was so comforting for me.

Well, a few months ago while cleaning out an extra garage, my grandmother found three boxes full of jeans. They had been there for decades I'm sure and I'm also sure that my grandmother had ideas to create these jeans into more quilts. Although she wasn't able I thought I would take a try.

Although it was an ambitious venture I knew that I could do it, I gave myself a short deadline, a goal and I was inspired by my grandmother. I knew that I could do it. And I did, I created 3 blankets for my very best friends in my life. Two of which are actually sisters and the other was for my best friend that I've known for over 15 years. All three have always been there for me and they were always comforting to me just like my grandmothers blankets were so I thought I owed them something.

So I knew the top would be jeans, the bottom I bought a fleece in the color that I thought represented each of them. Purple for Lena, Blue for Yvonne and Black for Ramona. The two for Lena and Yvonne have the same design over the jean because it means a few things, the tree of life and family tree. I got the idea for the tree design from a stamp I saw on a stamping blog, if you recognize it let me know so I could give credit for it. However, it is modified so it was a mirror image and easier to cut.

You can click on the images for a bigger view, the one above is turned to the right. The bottom is a full view of the tree as it was on the blanket.

This was the purple/flower cutout for the first blanket, I don't have a picture of the blue cutout, only after it was on the jean top.

Above is the picture of all my rectangles pinned together as I get to piece them and start sewing.

Above is the beginning layout of how I started to piece them together over the fleece to make sure I had the right size.

Above is the jean peices all put together to creat the top of the quilt.
This is the blue quilt for Yvonne, don't let the pattern of the tree fool you, I'm not THAT good, it's a pattern that looks like patchwork and it's only a full piece.
This is the completed top of the purple quilt for Lena, the pattern is purple flowers.

Yvonne's blanket had a different layout of jean squares and rectangles but the top tree is the same. I had drew the trees on the back of the fabric and cut everything by hand and sewed them with my mom's sewing machine. Here they are together, it's not a great picture but you get the idea.

This is my friend Ramona's blanket, it was also inspired by a stamp, it's random and I'm glad she liked it. It's a pale pink with black flowers on the fabrick but it looks almost white here.It's backed with a black fleece and I added two hearts to the right top side, I used to sign these little hearts with my name in high school and I thought it was a good memory for us. We're both only 28 and we've known eachother more than half our lives.

Here is an up close of the hearts.

And here is an up close of the stitching and the fabric. I hope you like them, I hope they like them. They were worth every minute of making them and I'm glad that they have a piece of me and my grandmother with them, keeping them warm, comforting them and inspiring them for new creations.

Happy crafting... :)