Now the Christmas presents have been opened I can share this gift I customised for my friend Mel. When I visited her in August we saw a fab pair of embroidered jeans in a store in San Francisco. It immediately gave me an idea rather than buy them I would embellish an existing pair of jeans that Mel already owned (more eco-friendly too).
Fast forward to November and I rediscovered the jeans and realised I had only a month to decorate them. I immediately created a Pintrest board to research ideas for the embroidery. One of the features of the original jeans Mel liked was the use of existing machine-embroidered patches. I ordered a set of these iron-on patches from Amazon and set about creating designs for the jeans.
I used a range of hand embroidery stitches including; back stitch, chain stitch, seed stitches, satin stitch, hand couching and french knots. The embroidery threads I used are dozens left over from my Textile Degree days over 20 years ago which consisted of DMC, Anchor, Moulin, MTM and Madeira Threads.
I started the design by laying out the iron-on patches grouping them into themes of junk food, fruits, flowers, and then I free-styled the hand-embroidery around the patches.
I thoroughly enjoyed the slow meditative process of creating the designs over the Christmas break. In terms of time I think there is about 25+ hours worth of stitching in the jeans which I sewed in bursts of 2 - 4 hours at a time. Mel really loves them which I am very happy about. Hopefully they will be worn a lot to get maximum enjoyment out of them!
Oh my, what a gift! Looks amazing and what a lucky friend. I particularly like the banana patch and the stars, and of course the up cycling angle ;-)
ReplyDeleteThanks Kate! I had a blast embroidering them.
DeleteWhat an amazing present and a great way to upcycle a pair of jeans. Such a clever idea to use embroidered patches with your own hand embroidery.
ReplyDeleteThank you Rosemary. It made me consider embroidering some of my own jeans.
DeleteWow, these look fantastic Caroline, what an amazing gift! I'm sure Mel will get lots of compliments when wearing these. Was it hard going doing the embroidery on a tough fabric like denim? X
ReplyDeleteHi Alex, the denim is a little harder to embroider compared with regular cottons / felts - my fingers were a little sore after a couple of hours embroidering at a time.
DeleteOh wow! This must have been so much work! I can't believe you did this masterpiece in only 20 hours. You have such a great eye for colors and coordination, it looks like everything is exactly at the right place and everything is do balanced. Also your embroidery is super neat! I'm truly impressed!
ReplyDeleteThanks Kat. I had a lot of fun sewing the different images.
DeleteAn incredible amount of work to put in for a present - great work
ReplyDeleteThanks Catherine!
Deletewow! I want a pair! I did promise myself I would do something on the collar of my denim jacket that is looking worn after 20 years. What an inspiration. Jo x
ReplyDeleteThanks so much Jo. Your denim jacket collar sounds like a great idea!
DeleteWow these are fantastic!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much CC x
DeleteYou turned that pair of jeans into something fun and fantastic. Well done.
ReplyDeleteAmalia
xo
Thank you Amalia. I really enjoyed sewing them too!
DeleteThey look stunning and so much better than plain. Mind you this shows my age we used to wear jeans like this but with large flares, lol
ReplyDeleteI bet those were really cool jeans Caroline!
DeleteBeautiful embroidery. You have made something completely unique.
ReplyDeleteThat's a lovely thing to say Ginx
DeleteWowza, they are stunning. I'm sure I have some sad and unloved jeans somewhere that NEED this kind of treatment.
ReplyDeleteThanks Julie. You should definitely embroider some of your own jeans too!
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