The Finished Product

So here is the final quilt. I showed it to my hubby and he "ooh, I get a new quilt!" I am pretty happy about how the whole thing came together. You can see in the second picture how much the denim frayed after one wash and two trips through the dryer.

A few lessons I learn:

I will be avoiding the light weight, stretchy denim the next time I make one. Even though the flannel has a tendency to grip whatever material, the stretchy fabric had a tendency to move.

One thing I didn't really think about was a seam around the outside edge. I will add it before the next wash. I'm not sure why I didn't think about it. I mean, what else will keep the fraying in check?

I didn't seem to have any issues with the fact that I didn't prewash the fabrics. There didn't seem to be any excessive shrinkage. I did notice that the colors of flannel seemed less vibrant. Also, I noticed the flannel picked up a lot of the little lint pills that came out of the dryer. Those are not always easy to get off.

If you are going to be washing this kind of blanket in your home washer and dryer, be prepared to pull a lot of lint out of both machines. And you will probably have to continue pulling tons of lint every time you wash it. Small price to pay though.

This blanket didn't turn out as heavy as I was expecting it to be. This is probably just because of the denim I used. I don't know that I will be jumping to make another of these in the immediate future. It's not that it was any more difficult than a regular quilt. I will say that personally, denim is not my favorite material to use. I will make another one but I will probably wait a couple of months before tackling another one of these. I have plenty of denim to work with!

So there is all that. It was an experience and one that was not as easy as I was hoping nor as difficult as I was expecting. But one I will be willing to try again.

I am going to taking the rest of this week off to focus on a big home improvement project and on family with Thanksgiving being just a few days away. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday! I will be back next week to start preparing for the Christmas season... So many possible projects to work on!