I’ve made some rather cra-a-a-a-zy, and yet rather out-there groovy-baby jeans!
And they double up as overalls too! should I ever feel the urge to wear a pair of overalls… 🙂 Sneaky conversion between the two by way of a few flat buttons inside the waistband coupled with buttonholes on the bib and straps… #havingmycakeandeatingittoo
So, these are the Jenny overalls/trousers pattern by the ever clever and uber-cool Heather of Closet Case patterns. Actually I made TWO pairs of Jennys!… but first things first; this blue denim pair are my first. To be honest I don’t know if I’m ever going to blog my second pair because I’m suffering from a retroactive hate for the fabric I used… but we’ll see! Heather asked for us to make them with the bib if at all possible, since she wanted to check out how the bib bit looked on chests. So I bravely went there. Initially I was pretty sure I would prefer to wear them as jeans, but now I’m actually a bit torn since the bib bit is rather cute?! I’m just not sure if I’m “cute” enough to get away with it, you know? I think I have a good grasp on what my style is, and “cute” is likely a stretch for me. I’m keeping my options open, but so far I’ve only worn them out in the wild sans bib #notbrave
The upper part of the legs I cut from a piece of blue cotton denim that was given to me by my friend L when she cleaned out her garage, but it was a smallish piece, not big enough for the whole jeans. So obviously, I had to make up the difference somehow. Remember my maisa jean jacket? well I actually kept all those leftover bits, most of them were the original pockets and waistbands; and I had great fun cutting and arranging and cobbling them together to make up the diff… all that patchwork does make the legs a little heavy, because of the double layers of fabric in the pocket buts, plus embroidery and rivets and belt loops, but overall (haha, see what I did there) it’s not too bad! My love of how they look outweighs the weight… if that actually makes sense!
I’ve worn them a couple of times already, whoops! It’s not that long ago I would not allow myself to wear things until I’d blogged them; must be mellowing out in my old age, hmmm. They’ve actually attracted several individual, real-life compliments from random passers-by on both occasions… this is extremely rare for me, and it’s pretty nice to hear!
In the below picture you can see the closure; a lapped zip in the side seam and disappearing inside the pocket. I really love this discreet and clever feature, although being right-handed I find it a little awkward to do up that waistband button situated where it is slightly to the back of the right side of my body. On subsequent pairs I think I’ll probably switch this closure to the left side of the trousers. Having said that though, the instructions for inserting the lapped zip are outstanding! I’ve inserted about a million lapped zips in my time, to the point where I barely follow instructions anymore, however I followed these ones to the letter, without “thinking about it” (you know what I mean) and my lapped zip is immaculately and perfectly aligned. I should follow directions more often!
Details:
Jeans/overalls; the Jenny overalls by Closet Case patterns, cotton denim and recycled old denim jeans
Tee; the Nettie by Closet Case patterns, white jersey, details here
Cardigans; both the Miette, a free pattern by Andi Satterlund, details of the red one here, the mustard one here
Shoes; made by me, details here
Soooo; I usually like to get at least one ” out in the wild and actually wearing it” photo of the things I make… well, the little monster, I mean; Clara, and I were waiting for Craig to finish scoping out Bunnings (baby door for the patio at the beach house) and on the spur of the moment I just propped my iPhone up in the grass outside. Bam, photoshoot, DONE!!! Who needs a fancy camera and a tripod, anyway?! Oh, OK, if I’m going to even pretend to be a blogger then I guess I gotta keep up appearances, at least some of the time… 😉 Anyway it’s not a particularly good shot of my jeans, more like flipping’ terrible; but on the other hand Clara happens to be looking rather beautiful in a wolf-prowl-y sort of a way… Please admire that her coat is looking momentarily spiffy and fluffy and washed and brushed! #didntlast
btw, people often accuse her of giving side eye in my pictures.. it’s only because her eyes are actually half blue, half brown! which makes for a particularly side-eye-y sort of optical illusion!
Details:
I discovered this pattern for little sockettes that you wear with ballerina flats; 
In more tangible making results, I made a little romper for 
As I was making it, it occurred to me… is jungle January still a thing? See, in the past few years I’ve been in the habit of making a set of underwear for jungle January, and one of the things about the basketball is that the Perth Arena is known as “the Jungle” during the Wildcats games. Like, they’re always screaming “WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE!!!!!!” and going on about “…. HERE IN THE JUNGLE…!!!!” “Jungle” I guess because, wildcats. Anyway, it occurred to me that I was serendipitously making a jungle-themed set of underwear again. Without even meaning to! Win!!!
So, a new year, a new 
That’s the jacket!!
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!
Firstly, two sage green/pale coffee, checked tweed skirts. I inherited this beautiful quality piece of wool tweed from my grandmother’s stash after she passed away. Although I earmarked it straight away as two skirts for Cassie and myself I just hadn’t got around to it and have sat on it all this time. It was one of those fabrics I couldn’t bring myself to cut into… you know, inherited from Granny, plus exceptionally good quality, equals inevitable thoughts of sewing tragedy followed by eternal self-damnation…. but I’m making myself get over that nonsense nowadays. Make it! Enjoy it! Live dangerously! So, finally… it helps too that I think Cassie has now grown into fabric of this calibre 😉 not that she didn’t deserve high quality fabrics before, but you know what I mean! it’s very much a grown-up fabric and makes a very smart little work skirt for her now that she has a serious and professional career. The fabric really is beautiful stuff… fine and evenly woven, and there are flecks of all sorts of colours in with the sage green/coffee check… blue, red and gold, caramel brown, forest green, and a hint of purple and black. It has no identifier on it but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was a fully English tweed. My grandmother was very much into that sort of thing 🙂
sie moved out of home she left this fabric behind and I almost started to factor it into my own plans mwahahahahaha… but of course she hadn’t forgotten it, o no! The reason she had deviously left it behind was so that I could make something for her with it! HA! She chose 
Details:
I’ve made a new dress using a bunch of my kids’ old jeans that I have 
been saving for this very purpose… and please note; yes, I am wearing 
Materials; obviously, all blue denim jeans. I used three pairs of children’s jeans, one pair of child’s long shorts and one pair of adult jeans. The adult jeans turned out to be necessary when I realised that the full-length panels at the back would look pretty terrible if pieced at the waist; it’s a very much piecemeal kind of a design anyway, and to have that nice long smooth length of fabric at the back is just a nice visual anchor in amongst all that busy patchworking, in my opinion. I decided it would be best to retain it; fortunately I had one pair of Craig’s old jeans in my refashioning bag and could cut the long back pieces from those.
My vision for this dress has always been to have lots of the existing jeans’ details retained in it, like the pockets with their decorative top-stitching, the coin pockets and belt loops and so forth; HOWEVER when it came down to it I retained very little of all that! The design was just so… busy; I ended up removing a lot of the little details I was going to put in. There’s still plenty of the jeans bits and pieces left in, I reckon just the right amount to keep that definite “jeans flavour” to it. There are a few original topstitched seams here and there, and the portion of a pocket left on the bodice. I also added tonnes of new topstitching in terracotta upholstery thread, in fact every seam is topstitched down in some cases doubly so.
Something I’ve managed to forget to blog about each time I’ve written about this dress… like all Vogue patterns, for a fitted design it’s a little blouse-y in the boob-al region for my figure; however the princess seamed bodice makes this a very easy fix. I simply pin and stitch to shave a bit off the inner curve of the central bodice piece (above), and this solves the problem for me. A very very easy small bust adjustment, and one I usually end up using for pretty much every fitted Vogue bodice with princess-seaming. I don’t have the same issues with Burda, but always with Vogue. I guess their “blocks” are a little different.
One pair of jeans, the very pale blue pair, was practically threadbare in places, but I still really wanted to have that pale blue as part of the lovely indigo-y mix… these pieces I reinforced with lightweight iron-on interfacing to the back to stabilise and strengthen these areas (below). Don’t want my new dress ripping in its first wear now, do I?!
