Hand Embroidered Jeans

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!

Hand-Embroidered Christmas Decoration

We are nearing peak Christmas spirits at CJ Made HQ this weekend.
I received a lovely hand-made Christmas decoration from my friend Amy in Denmark which prompted me to reciprocate with this bright and cheerful hand-embroidered felt decoration. It took me about an hour to make and you could add embroidery ranging from the most simple stitches to something extremely intricate depending on your sewing skills or time scale.

The design of the decoration was partly inspired by the glorious visual feasts from the Channel 4 show Kirstie's Home-made Christmas. You can not watch these programmes without wanting to bust out your crafting kit!

Onto the making. I cut out two heart shapes in felt and embroidered a green line of chain stitch about 2cm from the edge.

I selected a bright blue for a snowflake design in the centre using back-stitch. Wooden beads were added for extra embellishment.

Scraps of felt were used to pad out the decoration but traditional cushion filling would probably add a little more luxury feel to the decoration. The edges were finished using blanket stitch in a bright yellow all the way around.

I plaited three embroidery threads to make the hanging loop. I knotted each end of the plait and pushed the knots in between the blanket stitch. I secured the loop in place with some regular sewing thread stitching. Colourful ribbon or wire would also work well for a hanging loop.

There you have it. A cute, inexpensive and quick hand-made Christmas decoration!