Embroidered Denim Jacket - Part 2

I am two or three hours late getting the blog post up today.  We had a big storm last night and out landline and internet were knocked out.  The service was just restored.  Now that spring is here I want to remind readers that we have some fierce storms in this area and that if you don't hear from me for a week or two it generally means we have lost power or internet service.  The longest we have been without power was ten days. 

Last blog post I said that I would post on a project I have been working on behind the scenes.  I had posted phase one of this project back in September, 2015.  At that time, I had embroidered the cuffs and waist line of the jacket with pansies.  It was a lot of work.  In some places the denim was five layers thick.  It took a long time to finish that phase of the project.  At that point, I decided I needed a break from it before continuing on with the project.

I guess I picked up the embroidery again in February of this year.  For this section I will only be embroidering through one layer of denim.  On each side of the jacket I embroidered morning glories.  It has taken about two months to complete the morning glories.  I don't keep track of time on the projects.  My philosophy is that a project is finished when it is finished.  If I start stressing about a deadline, it takes all the fun out of doing it.  Just as an estimate, I would say that the morning glories took about sixty hours.  I probably have a hundred hours of embroidery in the jacket so far.  This is a project I do when my husband and I sit down to watch television in the evening.  Take a stitch, look up at the TV, take another couple of stitches.  It would be a bit faster if I was not watching television, but much faster.  I could embroider on a sewing machine, but then, I would not be trying to sew on a machine while I was watching television. 

There are two more panels on the front on each side to complete.  Each section will have a different type of flower.  Each panel is narrower than the one before.  The flowers will be different colors.  I want it to look like a flower garden.  I think I will stop at embroidering the front.  Sometimes you can do too much work on something.  Knowing when to call a project finished is as important as getting it started.

If I am not doing embroidery, I quilt in the evenings.  I chose to embroider this time because it is less expensive than quilting.  Embroidery thread is only forty-two cents a skein.  Fabric is now so expensive that it costs a lot to make a quilt.  However, anything you do repetitively gets old after a while.  Once I complete the denim jacket I will be ready to make a quilt again.

I will have some pictures of the lamb project on Thursday.  I am making progress.  I will be blogging the first photos of that project on Thursday.