I’m so pleased with this latest refashion that I finished just yesterday, that I just had wear it even though it’s really too hot for this time of year…
I took an old pair of too big, light cotton twill pants that my mother didn’t want anymore, and made for myself this loose unstructured jacket that I am now totally in love with…
I realise it may not be everyone’s cup of tea and I’m not sure Craig is very keen on it, but meh… I really like it!
I first got the idea after seeing some of the Desigual designs, using old jeans upside down as the bodice of dresses, see below from Desigual. I know, I know, mine doesn’t look much like this, but I’m just trying to illustrate where my original inspiration for this idea came from…
This is the pair of pants as they were originally…
I cut along the inside leg seams, not the whole way down the legs but just in the crotch area, and put it upside down to be used as the bodice of my new jacket; with the cut-open old leg/crotch seam as the new neckline. The excess leg tubes were cut off to be used later as sleeves. I sewed the jeans legs together for my shoulder seam…
Cut away some of the side seam for an armhole edge. This was my first armhole cut, which is why the armhole looks a bit too small; it took some trial and measuring to get that armhole length perfectly fitted to the sleeve circumference (“sleeves” being the old lower legs above I just cut off)… In trialling something experimental like this I’m a big believer in cutting away not-enough and then having to take away a little more, rather than cutting too much to start with and then regretting it… (Horrible sentence, but I’m sure you seamstresses know what I’m talking about there)
I used one of these armhole cutouts to cut a triangle to fit in the V of the back, and sewed it in, mimicking the double topstitching featured elsewhere on the jeans… Oh, I did have to unpick the curve of that back centre seam some and re-sew it to be straighter before this step…. again mimicking the double topstitching for continuity. The top of this back neck edge was finished on the inside with a short strip of bias binding for stability. As for the back; the curved part of the front crotch seam was unpicked a little bit and resewn to be a straighter seam, and then the V of the front neckline was folded in and finished also with double topstitching.
Set in the sleeves. The sleeve hems are just the old jeans hems and were left intact for ease of finishing.
I topstitched closed the edges of those slanted front pockets, and removed the back pockets (now upside down) from the back of the jeans and repositioned them right way up onto the front of the new jacket. See, the waistband of the jeans is still the waistband of the new jacket, and that fly can still be unbuttoned and unzipped for ease of taking on and off; just that it’s upside down now…
Et voila!
Details:
Jacket; my own design, refashioned from an old pair of light cotton twill pants
Skirt; my own design, based on the shape of Vogue 7303, black lace and black lace strips
Tshirt; Tbox
Thongs; Mountain Designs
It’s been pretty difficult to post, what with available computer time being taken up with the superior demands of teenage Facebook time, not to mention some essential out-of-office business maintenance. My blog has taken very much a back seat.
Looking very Aussie here on the streets of Hirafu, on Mount Niseko-Annupuri in Hokkaido, Japan.
