Cold weather projects

Summer is winding down so I'm getting back into a sewing mood. Started a jeans quilt recently, one that's going to be a really simple pattern, and have found a mending project that should eat up a fair number of hours in front of the television this winter.

The jeans quilt will be approximately full-size. At this point I'm thinking I'll do a thin border using a bright corduroy around the brickwork and then will do an outer border using denim squares. I figured out it's going to take 28 rows of the rectangles; I've got 7 completed so far. Once it's done, it'll get ticked with embroidery floss. It will, of course, include at least one pocket. I'm probably going to give it to someone with kids, and little kids love having pockets they can hide stuff in.

The mending project is a fairly small square quilt I finished in the early 1980's. Not sure where I found the pinwheel pattern, but do recall it took forever to cut the pieces. Then I hauled them around in an ice cream pail for a couple years (from Michigan to unincorporated Snohomish County in Washington to Panorama City (California) to Tucson (Arizona) and finally to Reno before I finally started piecing it. I think we were still living in Reno when I finished it.

It's held up remarkably well overall, but exposure to light combined with normal wear and tear (when I make quilts, they're meant to be used and not hung on a wall as a decorative item) caused one specific fabric to dry rot. Depending on the dyes used, some fabrics break down remarkably fast. (I learned the hard way that black cotton blends are never a good choice for use in a quilt. They either fade to a truly ugly green or dry rot almost instantly.) Mending it will entail cutting pieces to fit the spaces where the original piece is now in shreds and then hand sewing the new pieces in place. Not sure just how long the process will take, but I know it's going to be fairly time consuming.