Oh hello, fellow needle-wielders!
Recently I decided I wanted, nay needed, a new colourful Jade mini-skirt; since my purple one was tragically taken too soon… *a minute’s silence, please*
…
Well, ta da!
I’d gone back to Knitwit in search of the same purple knit… why the same colour? perhaps because I’m a boring unoriginal creature of habit? but unfortunately they had sold out of the purple. So I chose this chilli-red instead. Rather nice, hmmm?
Every time I try to take any pictures in the full-on blasting sun, I regret it… however this does show off the lovely vibrant fiery-ness of this intense red rather well
For the lining, I cutup an old black Tshirt, one of Sam’s toss-outs, it’s quite a nice, sturdy, not-very stretchy and robust 100% cotton black knit, so should work really well as a lining. . I’d given some thought into the lining this time, since the tragedy of too-much stretchiness of the purple one… that was a 100% polyester whereas my other stretch mini skirt, my self-lined charcoal one is a cotton jersey, quite stiffish with only a one-way stretch and that is holding up very nicely. The black Tshirt fabric I used for this is very like that…
obligatory lining picture is pretty boring, sorry
With this version, I fitted and reinforced the waistband with stretch interfacing so it is quite firm and minimally flexible…
… AND put in an exposed black/brass jeans zip into this skirt.. I’m hoping these two factors will help keep that waistband firm and strong, so it suffers minimal stretching out and extend the life of the skirt… Just for looksie’s alone, I just love the brassy glint of the zip, I think it looks really cool.
Going from my past jade skirt AND my past red skirt experiences, I KNOW I’m going to wear this a metric tonne. Can’t wait to mix and match this one to bits!
Details:
Skirt; Paprika patterns Jade skirt, red silk/linen knit from KnitWit
Top; the twist top from Pattern Magic, in ivory ponte also from KnitWit, details here
Tights; my own design, black polyester stretch from Spotlight, details here and my tutorial on how to make your own custom tights pattern here
Boots; made by me and my own design, all details here
location; the bush in south western Western Australia
Olá!
My pattern is very loosely the epaulette top from She Has a Mannish style, cut to flare out more in the body and sleeves… the lining is cut straighter in the sides. The shell and lining have separate side seams, but are sewn together at the shoulders and armscye. I pinned and stitched a square neckline, cut and overlocked the edge, and then stitched a length of white cotton bobbin lace around to edge it, part of a large stash that I’ve had for many, many (many, many) years. It’s funny, I kind of threw this together just for the costume, but you know what?? I actually love it and will definitely be wearing this again, in real life!
his costume inspiration… we’d bought red, blue, green and yellow feather boas from Spotlight to customise the black pants and black shirt that he already had in his wardrobe.. we also bought yellow satin for a sash and a yellow velour fedora from Spotlight too…
Pattern; the Sudley by Megan Nielsen patterns, I gathered up the sleeve hems with skinny elastic, like I had done for 
O hey!
A jeans-to-jean-jacket project has been a long-term “thing” in my little bucket list of refashions that I have in my head. and one of the reasons I’ve been collecting my children’s old jeans for only like, forever… recently I was asked to speak at the 20th anniversary celebrations of Australian Sewing Guild, a huge honour! and in the general chit-chat heard mention of their 
While I lurve a patchy aesthetic to my clothing, and of course the beauty of a thing like a jean jacket is that it’s supposed to look a bit beat up and NOT a work of beautifully tailored perfection… I still wanted it to look at least a little bit intentional and not too bunged together. There was plenty of colour variation even within each single pair of jeans as well as fashionable distressing effects everywhere too, so I carefully cut so as to make sure the colour variations were matched symmetrically all over the jacket, for example; the upper arms are cut from the same area of one pair, the side fronts also both from the same area of another pair, ditto the two side backs, etc etc, so as much as I possibly could the lighter blue areas are balanced out nicely and symmetrically with the darker blue areas on the jacket.
Thoughts on the pattern: description says a classic, unlined, button-down denim jacket with collar; short and loose-fitting design with flap pockets at the front; sleeve vents and wide button cuffs, wide band at the hem. Well, hmmm, I’m not going to start ranting about my pet hate; the incorrect use of the term “button-down”. Noooo, I’m not. Apart from that! everything else about the pattern is pretty awesome. A slight negative; it is a bit more loose-fitting than I anticipated. Not 80’s loose, but still pretty loose. I’m ok with it really… I will certainly wear it anyway! it’s so comfy and feels absolutely fantastic on! plus I’m only wearing it over a thin little Tshirt here and of course a bit of oversizedness is a good thing when I’ll want to wear it over cardigans or long-sleeved woolly tops in the winter. I think when I get a little time I might have a go at re-jigging the pattern to be a little more form-fitting, for the future. I still have plenty of pairs of jeans that need refashioning, so a second, differently styled jean jacket might even happen. One which even has bigger and better functioning hip pockets!
Now, remember how I mentioned pretty recently that I was looking out for this pattern?? Well, Evie, of 
Please note; I did receive this pattern gratis, however there are no affiliate links in this post. I will always notify my readers if there is an affiliate link in my posts. Also on a tangential yet related note, I read somewhere that people think bloggers are raking in the money through affiliate links, well! that may be true for some types of bloggers, like maybe fashion bloggers? but sewing bloggers… NO.
I used a contrasting white thread here because I found you could barely make out a single thing in my pictures with the matching thread! anyway:
Trim away the raw edge as close to the 2nd stitching as you can.
This is actually the second Sudley I have made. I also made a dress that has now been assigned to Cassie when I realised it was just going to be a little too, er, young for me. I expect it’ll show up on ye olde blog here sometime…
I also cut the lower hemline to have a curved “shirttail” line to it. The hems and the neckline are all finished by hand, because I really wanted to have a smooth clean stitch-free expanse of fabric with absolutely no visible topstitching anywhere. This is about as invisible as I could get.
