I am going to start off this final Learning Project post by saying how proud I am of myself. When I chose sewing as my learning project, I thought I was way in over my head. Every week was causing me some sort of struggle whether it be with the machine, the thread, or the denim fabric. There were many times throughout my experience where I wondered why I decided to do sewing! After today, my denim quilt is officially finished and I am so proud of myself for actually finishing it and for how well I did as a first timer (don't mean to toot my own horn, but it's pretty nice). If you have been reading my blog then you know that I have been posting steps with pictures for each step I have taken in making this blanket. This is a 15 step process I have created! Previously I had... Step 1: Collect jeans Step 2:Cut jeans into squares Step 3: Iron squares Step 4: Lay out your pattern Step 5: Pin pieces of fabric together Step 6: Line the fabric up with the needle and start sewing using the foot pedal Step 7: Once you have a row sewn together, continue on the next one until all of your rows are sewn together Step 8: Once all of your individual rows are sewn together, sew the rows together too by following the same format Step 9: Cut longer pieces of jeans to use as a border. Again, follow the same sewing technique as the squares Step 10: Sew on the border of the blanket And in this last week, I've added: Step 11: Cut quilt batting to the size of the blanket. Leave a little space as you will still need to sew on the back fabric Step 12: Hand sew thread into the batting so that the batting does not move around once the blanket is sewn up Step 13: Cut out the top layer of fabric and pin together just like the earlier steps to make it easier to put through the sewing machine Step 14: Sew up three sides from the inside. Flip it inside out and sew up the last side on the outside Step 15: Wrap yourself in it and take a nap. YAY!! With these 15 steps, I was able to create my blanket. Of course, I could not have done it without some of my trusty resources. There were four sites/blogs/videos that I would have been lost without. Let's reminisce: 1) For when I had no idea where to start: "How to Make a Gorgeous Denim Quilt from Blue Jeans"
Thank goodness to these resources. They were my saving grace throughout the process!! Now let's look back to day one!! Looking back at my first post, I had laid out my game plan. Here is how it looked: My Plan: Week 1: Buy supplies, read up on how they are all used and do a refresher course on sewing (research). Week 2: Find some articles of clothing around the house that have holes in them - practice hand sewing on them. Week 3: Get a little more creative - try sewing on buttons, patches and zippers. Week 4: Research the sewing machine - how does it work and what do I do. Week 5: Practice on some smaller pieces of fabric (nothing too elaborate, just simple items). Week 6: Buy fabric and begin my final project (this may waiver, but as of now, this will be a large blanket). Week 7 - the end of the semester: Working on and completing my final project (hopefully it turns out well!) So how did I do? I stuck with this pretty much perfectly. I had a few minor setbacks within the week 7 to the end of the semester with struggles from sewing, but overall I followed my plan very closely. I learnt so much through this process. I learnt how to make a time lapse video and a how-to video. I've come so far. When I started, I knew how to sew up holes in shirts at a mediocre level and now I can sew together complete quilts! Wow - I am impressed with myself. It also helped to have my EDTC 300 and 400 peers around to help support me through my journey. Some weeks I found myself lacking the energy to do any sewing, but after reading encouraging words from my peers, I let that be the motivation and support I needed to pull through and finish my blanket. It has been an amazing experience. Sewing is something I've always wanted to learn, but never took the time out of my day to do so it feels great to finally have tried it and actually created something out of it. Also I think it was cool to learn this all from online, there were so many resources to look at to help me along the way and once I found the ones that worked best for me everything fell into place. My only trouble with this was that, although there are tons of resources, no quilt is exactly the same so I had a tough time finding a blog or instructions on how to make a blanket in the exact way I wanted to. Some websites didn't use denim, others were doing very different patterns and many denim quilts were shows with their seams sticking outwards to add a fringe look to them. So once I found websites and videos that worked for me, I had to slightly adapt them to match my blanket specifically. For instance, the inside batting needs to be sewn down so that when it goes through the wash or gets used in life, the batting won't get all squished. I looked up online how to do it and they suggested to sew it making it almost look like a web and having the batting sewn on while it is inside the blanket (like a sandwich) - I linked the video here. My problem was that I did not want a bunch of seam marks on my blanket, I just wanted to seam marks to go around the blanket. I had to adapt and instead I hand-sewed thread into the backing and into the batting. This process probably took a lot more time, but I love the way my blanket looks! There was one little mistake I made while sewing it up - I missed a little bit of fabric that was shorter, so when i folded it in to get sewn on the machine, it didn't quite get picked up so I resewed it with the machine and missed it again and then had to do it again so I think it still looks fine, but I guess you live and you learn from these mistakes. Overall, I am extremely happy with my experience creating this blanket and I highly recommend anyone if they have the time to try it out because not only do you get a super cosy and warm result at the end, but whenever I was not struggling with machine, I found it very relaxing to sit there and sew for a few hours. Here are some pictures of my results. And I'm sure you can see by my facial expressions in some of these pictures that I am so proud of myself. I literally finished it and ran to my roommate's room and made her take a picture of me immediately because I was so excited! Funny enough, all this time I was working on this blanket so I could bring it to the beach and ever single I finished it, I've been cuddling up with it everyday! Who knows if it will ever make it to the beach!!
Thank you to Katia and my EDTC 300 and 400 peers! I had a lot of fun making this and I am so proud of myself for all my hard work. Thanks for a great semester everyone and thank you for reading my blog!!
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AuthorHillary Mercier is a 4th Year Student at the University of Regina. She is currently studying to be a High School English teacher. Archives
April 2019
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