Recycled Denim

Three active little boys can burn through jeans like nothing! The knees are the first to wear out, at which point I cut them off into shorts. For some reason, I saved all those cut off leg pieces, along with other jeans that had worn out. This is what they turned into - a huge map of the USA! This covers the top of our queen-sized bed.

Here's how I did it: I used a poster of the USA and enlarged it 150% state by state. Then came the painstaking process. Cut out all 50 states, trace them onto Heat-N-Bond, iron onto the wrong side of the denim, and then cut each state out again. Heat-N-Bond is a miracle. Everything is ironed onto heavy twill, waiting for some messy free-motion quilting around each state! That will be my favorite part - I have some fun ideas for the oceans, too.