Third and final Botanicals bag-from-jeans

The third bag from my discarded and no-longer fitting jeans is finished. This one is made from the back of the jeans  - cut down the side seams and the top of the legs. 

As for the two previous bags, the motifs are taken from Beautiful Botanical Embroidery. This time, however the motifs are not joined into an overall landscape but simply arranged to fit the shape of the fabric. Both back pockets are included, although I cut off (quite crudely, without neatening) the flaps and buttons on the pockets. The holes left where the buttons were removed are each covered by an embroidered bee.

These are some of the motifs. I've changed the colours but mostly stuck to the recommended stitches.

Almost all embroidery is in DMC perle 5, which works really well on the soft denim. It gives texture and coverage without stiffness. It is now available (mine came from Create in Stitch) in a good range of colours. 

In a few places I used Zenbroidery thread, which is about the same thickness.

The purple is Coats Lotus No 8 - from the Guild trading table!

This is it before I folded it into the bag. At the end I added a few bees to fill empty spaces and create a unity ( evident on the photos at the top of this page).

I used a black and white Japanese cotton print of bamboo, with a few blue butterflies as lining. Seemed appropriate. The strap, as with the other two bags, is made from a strip of fabric from the front of the jeans.

I'm satisfied with my three bags. They will be useful for something and someone - and a reminder of those lost kilos.

Second Botanicals Bag-from-jeans

 The second bag-from-jeans is also based on designs from Alice Makabe's Beautiful Botanicals Embroidery.  The first side is a simplified version of her 'night in the forest' on page 15. I removed all plants except the trees, and added a moon and two bats. It isn't as impactful as the first bag, but I am very happy with the effect. I've used perle 5 thread throughout.  I had just enough of the variegated thread for the leaves.

I began on the face of the owl with silk thread. I had a hank of silk that contained a range of colours I thought might work the whole owl, but I wasn't happy with the performance of the silk , so swapped back to perle 5 cotton in two shades of grey for the rest of the body. Heavier thread works better on this denim.

On the back I worked a version of the circular floral motif on page 12., where it is a small circular wreath repeated around 4 sides of a cloth. I enlarged it a little and worked it in the centre, Then enlarged and repeated it twice to form a series of concentric (more or less) circles, using a silvery-grey Perle 5 in deference to the colours in the owl.  Again, it blends rather than standing out as the white does on bag 1.

A remnant of upholstery fabric I bought from Nicola Jarvis 3-4 years ago makes quite a good lining.

I had to take great care stitching it into the bag. Because of a tear in the lining fabric, I had to juggle a little. The lining is non-stretch and it was a tight fit at the top - but I got there.

It has worked. The first bag certainly makes more of an impact, but this has charm, I think  

I am now working on the third bag - made from the back of the jeans with pockets, where smaller individual motifs are a reasonable fit with the more broken up spaces. Quite different.

First Beautiful Botanical Embroidery Bag-from-Jeans

I have lost 22 kg over the last 9 months. Mostly I am wearing the same clothes, in some cases modified. One pair of 3/4 length jeans reached a point where they fell down, and a belt didn't work well. I considered giving them to a charity, but decided I'd rather recycle them another way. 

I cut the legs off as tubes and then the body part along the side seams. Folding the back in half along the back seam will give me a bag with pockets, using the waist band as the bag top. The front is then cut into strips to form handles.

I am going to use adaptations of some of the motifs from this book on all three bags. For the first bag, I'm using a version of the design on the front cover.

Once I was sure I couldn't trace on to this weight of cloth, I tried a couple of different pens, settling in the end for an archive one. I drew them by hand, enlarging them to fit the shape I had. 

I chose my hoop size to fit the large motif on the bottom corner, and assembled a bundle of threads I thought might work.   

       

I used a  variegated perle 5 thread for the large bloom. I love the opportunity to use acquired specialty threads in projects like this. It used the whole skein.

Here is the finished side. I considered whether to leave the other side plain, but settled on a spray of leaves and blooms, still from the Botanical Embroidery book, in white on the other side. 

I'm using a No 3 Twilley's Stalite cotton, which gives a good coverage and texture.

It took three moves of the hoop and a few touch ups on the edges to finish. The denim has stretch in it which seemed to help in maintaining tension.

A single strap was enough and I lined it with some spotted cotton from my stash. It required a join - but no hassle (believe it or not, it has been ironed, though not with my steam iron. Never was much of an ironer!)

Here's the finished product, back and front. I am delighted with the result and am looking forward to making the next one - this time a night scene with owl.