Monthly Archives: July 2012

There is something exhilarating about transforming textiles otherwise destined for the ragbag into something fabulous … enter exhibit A: the new/old deconstructed hoodie that I have made for myself.  I was inspired by a really cute little thing that Cassie brought back home from her trip over east recently; an “all about eve” jacket with a vest of distressed denim, fleece sleeves and hood.  Of course I eyed it up and unlike a “normal” woman who upon falling in love with a garment would just seek out and buy one for herself; my immediate reaction was to commence plotting how I could create something myself…  mwahaha.  I emptied out the huge bag of crappy old clothes potential refashioning material that I have in my laundry, and selected an old pair of cords; very worn, but in a yummy colour and one of Tim’s old white long-sleeved Tshirts.  

The verdict?  I am pretty thrilled!  I love the deconstructed, already-worn-in, sporty-cool vibe of this funny little piece, and I’m also chuffed that I got to use this favourite-coloured corduroy fabric again!

All the boring nitty gritty of the construction details are below; if you are interested  🙂

Details:
Hoodie; my own design (see below), made from an old pair of corduroy jeans and an old white Tshirt
Jeans; Burda 7863 modified, purple stretch denim, details here
Tshirt; self-drafted and overdyed cotton jersey, details here
Socks; not seen, but hand-knitted by me!  🙂
Shoes; Francesco Morichetti, from Zomp shoes

My old jeans were quite worn, with a few holes and the corduroy pile was drastically worn away in some areas, but I kept them because I really really love the sludgy colour of the brown-on-blue pile.  Very very moi, yes?  Luckily they were big enough that I managed to cut my bodice pieces from the two legs of the jeans, only having to lay the wide front pieces over an inner leg seam, and ensuring to have the corduroy pile all running “down” the jacket pieces.  This felt like an achievement in itself!  I unpicked the waistband and re-used it upside down as the waistband on the new jacket, keeping the jeans button and buttonhole; and also the belt loops which were re-sewed back up onto the body of the jacket.  

The waistband was not going to be long enough to go around the new waistband of my jacket, so I cut it in half and inserted a filler bit.  I took the opportunity here to also insert in a little self-belt to nip in the back waist; with a brass buckle than I had kept from an old belt.  The “filler” piece is cut against the grain compared to the waistband for two reasons: firstly I had very limited fabric and this was pretty much the only option! but also because I think it is often better for a filler piece to look obviously different from the pieces around it, and not to try too hard to blend in, which can look shonky if it is not completely seamless.  Does that make sense?  (hope so  :))  )

The pockets and pocket flaps from the seat of the jeans were removed, re-sized and sewed on the front of the jacket as breast pockets; with the existing press-studs on each still in place and doing the same job they were originally.  I sewed welt hip pockets into the front of the jacket, for visual interest as well as for function; I’ve noticed how jeans jackets are often chocka with interesting details and bits and pieces.  For the pocket bags inside, I managed to re-use the internal brown cotton pocket bags from the front hip pockets in the jeans.

The white Tshirt is one Tim used to wear as a thermal layer under other shirts, and apart from a few small avoidable holes and being a bit mis-shapen it was otherwise in reasonable nick.  It suffered a minor laundry incident a few years ago when a red sock snuck into a load of whites; and everything came out of the washing machine a perfectly luvverly shade of pink!  Fortunately Tim is not the sort of guy whose masculinity is threatened by a pink Tshirt and he continued to wear it.  The pink eventually washed out over the years to off-white, and now you could barely tell its little “accident”  🙂
The hood pieces were cut from the body of the Tshirt, using the hood pattern piece from KwikSew 3667, and the sleeves were pretty much unaltered and used as is.  I cut them inside the armscye seam, and overlocked around the raw edge.  I finished the armscyes of the jacket with a bias cut strip of polycotton, and sewed the sleeves just inside this, for a clean finished look on both outside and inside.

The hood was sewn to the neckline of the jacket and the raw edges enclosed in a strip of bias cut polycotton, topstitched down on the outside of the jacket.

I was extremely fortunate to find buttons in my stash that were a very good match for the press studs and jeans button, so I re-used these.  If old clothes are destined for the ragpile I always keep the buttons and anything else that might be useful down the track; a frugal habit that pays off time and time again in my sewing.  This is a habit that goes back generations in my family!

Some more info re the pattern, since I often blithely state that “my pattern is self-drafted”.  It has occurred to me that people might like a bit more info here in case you wish to re-produce the same thing: I checked out the general shapes used in RTW jeans jackets and used my Pattern Magic sloper to help re-create the same shapes.  This jacket is my first try-out to see how my pattern fitted me, and I am very happy with the fit and the style, although I might introduce a few little variations on future versions  (naturally  🙂  )
My advice to anyone considering self-drafting? get yourself a Pattern Magic book and work through a few of the exercises as I have; these books are absolutely blinkin’ fantastic for teaching one about self-drafting and manipulating fabric and pattern pieces and shapes to get different effects.  I am no longer frightened of playing about with shapes and moving, altering and grouping together body shaping features such as darts, tucks, gathering and pleats to transform a 2D piece of fabric into a 3D sculpture that will fit my 3D body.  Or even not to “fit” my body, but to do some whimsically artistic thing just to look cool… these books are worth their weight in gold!