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.

Jedi Jeans

My grandson's birthday last weekend, so I have been embroidering a pair of jeans with a couple of Jedi warrior motifs. I used a publicly available colouring-in page as my starting template. After contemplating covering the whole surface with figures, I settled for two - Yoda and Luke Skywalker.

Reluctantly, I transferred the design using Solvi, removing the latter as soon as I had the outline stitched.  It worked OK this time - I was fairly quick stitching the outline, so the Solvi didn't become brittle.

I used some thread from Denmark, purchase from the Embroiderer's Guild a while back. It was fairly course but very strong and good to work with on the tough surface of the denim. I liked it a lot. I used up the best part of a green hank on Yoda!


The harder one was Luke Skywalker. Firstly, I had overlooked the awkwardness of getting my hand inside a boy's skinny leg jeans!

Then there was the small matter of embroidering a face - not one of my skills.

I adjusted the hair, redid the facial features, took the hair out completely and redid it - then, finally, unpicked the whole thing except for the arm and light sabre! I used DMC neon for the sabre.

I am satisfied with the result. They were well received and looked good when Fionn wore them to the movies on Monday.

Hawthorn Jeans

My grandson follows Hawthorn in the Australian Football League, so I thought I would try to embroider a Hawthorn logo on to some denim shorts for him for Christmas.

I found the club logo, copied and traced it on to Solvi. I don't much like working with this, but I have found it the best way to get an outline onto denim.


Once I had stitched around the outline, I removed the Solvi and filled in the rest.

I had originally intended to use chain stitch but decided I'd get a better effect and wear using stem stitch.

 It progressed well. The logo is a great design - the lines are continuous and fluid and the two colour juxtaposition gives a great sense of dimension.

I am pleased with the effect and the impact of the stitching. Even the back looks as if it will stand the rigors of the treatment it is likely to get from an eight-year-old knee!









Fionn was well pleased with these on Christmas Day.