Denim picnic quilt

Some quilts begin with a fabric collection. This one began with our lives.

For more than ten years, I kept old jeans in a box, unable to throw them away. Some came from different homes, different years, different versions of ourselves. Every piece carried memories of everyday life, movement, travel and change.

Last spring, I finally decided it was time to turn all those forgotten clothes into something useful again: a large picnic quilt made from clothing fabrics and full of memories.

I used almost 10–12 pairs of jeans, pajamas, old shirts, men’s underwear, other trousers and leftover heavyweight cotton scraps. More than anything, I used our memories of wearing all these clothes: our comings and goings, in different countries, in different lives.

Quilt Process

Preparation: Finally, all these clothes came out of the box — my box of “(s)crap”, as I call it. They were washed, cut apart, carefully ironed and finally cut into 6-inch squares.

My pile of clothes

Assembly: I randomly sewed the squares together, simply making sure that I reached the finished size I wanted. I wanted this quilt to feel spontaneous and imperfect, more like a memory collage than a carefully planned design.

Quilting: Since the quilt was huge, heavy and bulky, I decided to try tying it instead of quilting it regularly. It was my first time trying this technique. I used blue yarn and a knitting needle to go through all those thick layers.

Quilt dimensions: 84” x 72”

Materials

As I said before, I used 10–12 pairs of jeans, pajamas, old shirts, men’s underwear, other trousers and some leftover heavyweight cotton scraps.

Binding: A heavyweight cotton fabric with red stripes. It gave the entire quilt so much life and became my favorite part of the whole project. And yes, of course I machine-bound this one!

Backing: An old IKEA heavyweight fabric, combined with more denim fabrics.

Batting: No batting used. The quilt was already super heavy and bulky, and it was always meant to be used only as a picnic quilt. I hope I didn’t do this the wrong way.

Date made: March 2017 – 29.3.2018

What I Learned From This Quilt

• Old clothes carry far more emotional weight than fabric bought from a shop.
• Tied quilts are perfect for very heavy materials.
• Improvisational patchwork can feel surprisingly freeing.
• Some quilts are not about precision — they are about memory.

We photographed the quilt in a beautiful playground in a nearby village. With the help of a couple of friends, and of course Orestis, the photos turned out particularly satisfying.

I expect many more photos as we use this quilt often. After all, it was made to live outdoors, travel with us, and gather even more memories.

Thank you for reading. Have a nice weekend, and don’t forget to stop by my Instagram account  @zarkadia  to keep track of what I’m doing and maybe say hi once in a while!