Denim Scrap Jacket

My husband goes through jeans. Quickly. And we've hung onto the destroyed denim to create patches for the less destroyed denim for quite some time. I finally looked at the pile and thought it was about time to satisfy a few sewing cravings and make a patched, embroidered, Japanese influenced wrap jacket.

There's a channel on youtube called Mutsu By Prospective Flow that's full of wonderful inspiration for doing things slowly, carefully, and by hand. Mutsu's work is so beautifully done and the videos are absolutely mesmerizing. After watching several garments come to life on their channel I decided it was time to create something fun for my toddler to wear. And since it's made out of scraps, when she gets too big for it I have the option of tearing it apart and sizing it up, extending its life.

So I sat outside with my seam ripper and scraped through the serged and felled seams of many pairs of jeans. I could have cut them apart at the seams, it's certainly an option if you want to do it that way or don't have a lot of time to devote to it, but I liked the idea of having every available inch of fabric there in case I needed it. There were a few areas in which this proved to be advantageous.

There was just enough fabric in the selvage to get the front piece on there. The extra time picking the seam apart paid off.

Notes on the design, pattern, and cutting

When it came to the design of the jacket I was thinking Japanese inspired because I love Japanese garments, I had been watching a lot of Mutsu, and the whole idea of patchwork and embroidery on this jacket is a nod to boro mending and sashiko stitching. The final result is a bit of a mish-mash of styles, because at the end of the day the function and practicality dictated a narrow sleeve and some extra fitting here and there. Looking through this page of 33 traditional Japanese garments from japanobjects.com provides some beautiful inspiration and a breakdown of some lovely garments. Can I buy all of those pieces please? Ok cool.

I drafted the pattern for the jacket using the general outline of one of my toddler's shirts to get an idea of the dimensions. My initial plan was to use straight seams to attach the sleeves but I made a muslin and realized there was too much fabric around the shoulders. So I made a few drafts and we had a few fittings (more than I expected for a simple garment) but I worked at it until it looked balanced.

Since the jacket pieces are so small I was able to cut the fronts, backs, and sleeves from single pieces of fabric. That's not really an option for an adult sized jacket. A larger jacket would require creating yardage out of scraps to cut pattern pieces from or patching pieces onto a backing fabric. There's a fun tutorial by Zoe Hong (a fashion design teacher) on youtube that shows how she made patches on an existing kimono to create a boro inspired jacket. This sort of project is freeing because you can use up a lot of fabric and make it as complicated or simple as you want. I plan on making myself a jacket like this as well.

Patchwork and construction

To get some ideas for what sort of mending I wanted to do, I dug around on Pinterest and created a board with images of hand mending, embroidery, sashiko, and boro pieces. I decided to try a bunch of different methods to mend the worn places and cover up stubborn stains. The possibilities are pretty much endless. It's also a good idea to patch and mend everything before assembling the garment. It's easier to do it that way because there's less fabric to maneuver when making hand stitches.

On the left I used my machine to stitch a patch to the damaged area, used chalk to outline a grid, and went over it with running stitches. On the right I pressed the cut edges of the patch under, and secured it with just the circular running stitches.

Construction was simple, I used a 5/8" seam allowance and after machine stitching the seams together I went through and tacked them open with a hand embroidery stitch. I didn't feel like felling seams or getting the serger out so it was a simple way to deal with the seam allowances. For comfort and warmth I gave it a lining which afforded me the opportunity to use up some fabric that I had left over from a dress I made a few years back. The color wasn't the best for me and I had no plans for the leftovers so it felt good to be able to use it in some way.

The jacket has two sets of ties, one on the inside to anchor right front (like a bath robe) and the exterior tie to close the left side. If it doesn't tie on both sides, the jacket will shift and slip around. For the interior ties I used a narrow petersham ribbon I had laying around (from millinery projects). I cut the ends on a 45 degree angle, used fray check to keep the bias cut from unraveling, and called it a day. The exterior ties were made out of some pretty scrap linen in my stash and I played with widths and lengths until I was happy with how the bow tied.

The dog patch

The idea for the dog patch came from an article in Threads Magazine. I'm glad I happened upon that information because if I was going to attempt a patch without any knowledge I probably would have embroidered it right onto the jacket, which would have been fine but the patch wouldn't be removable. If the patch is made on two layers of tulle, the whole thing can be finished and placed on the garment of choice, and removed later to be added to something else. Nice.

In process: I attached the felt dog to the tulle with a whip stitch. It keeps the cut edges concealed and provides nice contrast.

Hehe. Details like this make me smile. I played around with placement and debated encircling the whole dog with embroidery but I like the halo effect I achieved on the finished piece by just going around his head.

Well what a fun project. The result is an adorable jacket, and I was able to divert some fabric that was too damaged to be donated away from a huge heap somewhere. I look forward to making something for myself in the future, because I still have a box of scraps in the studio, just waiting.