Embroidered Denim Jacket Completed

 This is one of those times where every project I have going has come to completion all at the same time.  I recently completed my folk art lamb soft sculpture.  And now, the denim jacket, my long term embroider project, is finished at almost the same time.  I thought I would put this up on the blog before I started anything new.

I generally have more than one project going at a time.  My main project is the one I work on during the day.  I generally also have a secondary project going that I work on in the evening.  Usually this is a sewing project that I work on while watching television and relaxing during the evening.  Once in a while, I will take on a third project when I need something to do while the main project has amounts of significant drying time between segments.  I try to limit myself to no more than three projects at once.  Otherwise, I end up with a lot of unfinished objects lying around.

The embroidered jacket was actually done in two phases.  In Phase One, I embroidered the cuffs and bottom band.  In some of those areas, I was sewing through five layers of denim.  Trying to push the embroidery needle through that many layers was uncomfortable for my hands and caused some inflammation.  Sometimes I had a break and let my hands calm down before taking up the embroidery again.  When I finished that segment,  I put the jacket away for a while, thinking that the band and cuffs were enough embellishment.

After letting the jacket sit for a while, I decided that it still was a little too plain for my taste.  The reason I started on this project at all was because I rarely wore the jacket because it was just plain denim.  It was a serviceable garment, nice to have with me on a cool day, but it just had no eye appeal.  So once I determined that it needed something more, I started on phase two.

Since I had started with flowers on the cuffs, I wanted to continue the flower theme on the front panels of the jacket.   I started envisioning a flower garden with flowers of different heights and colors.  The panels closest to the side seams are morning glories.  The middle section is a rather generic flower shape.  The section closest to the buttons is supposed to be roses.  Some of the flowers came out better than the others, but overall, I think the jacket reflects the theme of a flower garden.

I used drawings of flowers as the inspiration for the flowers.  I drew a silhouette shape of the flower.  Then I used a crewel stitch (long stitch, short stitch) to fill in the silhouette.  The flowers are not completely realistic, but I was trying to give an impression of real flowers.  It was hard to see the shape of the silhouette on the dark denim.  I had to draw it on with a permanent ink.  After that, it was do something with it or toss out the jacket.  I just stayed with the process until I had something that worked.  Sometimes I had to rip out a section and do it over.  Well, maybe I did not have to, but I wanted to because it did not look like I had imagined it would look. 

Phase Two took a fair amount of time.  I worked on it regularly from mid-March until this week, so about four months.  Most of the time, I worked on it for at least two to three hours a day for at least five days out of the week.  There were a couple of weeks where I was traveling and did not work on it, but overall, I think Phase Two took over two hundred hours.  All in all, I think the total project probably approached three hundred and fifty hours or better.  There are thousands of stitches in this project. 

There is still plenty of room for more embroidery on the jacket, but I am choosing to stop here.  Sometimes less is more.  Embroidering every area would make the jacket too busy.  Right now, the jacket tells a story of a garden.  I am pleased to leave it like that.

I will be blogging about the new project(s) on my Thursday blog posts.