Watermelon and Ginger Jeans

I made jeans!And they're colourful and they fit and they look reasonably professional. And they're jeans that I made! It's definitely an exciting achievement. Exciting enough to jump for joy.

These are the Ginger Jeans from Closet Case Patterns. I cut out the size 2 although I should be a size 0 - I measured the test square and discovered that it had printed slightly under scale. I've never had that happen before with a digital pattern before so I'm not sure what went wrong, but fortunately it was as easily solved as cutting out the next size up. I'd also printed the low rise version but decided I wanted them high waisted. Instead of printing out the high waisted version - or even just the pages for the waist - I simply sketched the seams for size 2 up to the top of the size 20.

I've been planning to make jeans for a while. I had planned to make some last year and bought the pattern and a different piece of denim, but it was more expensive and I was too daunted to use it. So instead I bought this cheaper denim. The fabric is a very stretchy and lightweight denim from My Hung fabrics. It came in both this watermelon red and a rich aqua, but I decided I liked the watermelon shade best.

The pattern recommended basting the pieces together first and trying them on just to check for any major fit issues. I normally don't bother with any of those precautionary steps - I've never made a muslin in my life - but I decided this time I would be good and follow every step. I tried them on and the fit was great. Even my sketching the waist from low rise to high rise had worked well!

The pattern is generally well written with clear instructions and accompanying pictures. However, I did have issues with the fly. Because I tend to find the fly tricky to do, I made sure I read through the instructions and look at the pictures before sewing and also made sure each step that I followed exactly. However, when I undid the basting stitches it wasn't centred. So I unstitched the lefthand side of the zipper, repinned it further in and stitched it back in so it sat flat and straight.

I only have the one sewing machine so I couldn't do what the pattern recommends and have one machine threaded with normal thread and one with topstitching thread. Howver my machine does a spot for an additional spool pin, so I threaded jeans needles with both normal and topstitching thread, put the normal thread on the normal spool pin and the topstitching spool on the additional pin so I only had to change the needles rather than rethreading.

I used a red topstitching thread because I haven't really used it before and didn't want it to show up too much in case it was wonky and uneven. I decided I wanted wavy lines for the back pocket topstitching which I marked on with tailor's chalk and then very carefully tried to follow my lines. They aren't perfect, and my other topstitching definitely isn't even straight lines, but it's probably better than I thought it would be.

The pattern is for skinny jeans, but they don't taper in right at the bottom but are instead straight from the calf. This is the only thing I dislike about the pattern itself, and if I use it again I will definitely change it so that they are skinny all the way down. However, this is only a minor issue.

I also would make the waistband piece smaller and more tapered. The pattern says the piece is slightly longer so that it can be trimmed and adjusted to each person's waist size, and while I did trim it shorter I found that after I'd ironed my interfacing on it stretched it slightly out of shape. Ironing the waistband after it was inserted helped even the slight waviness a bit, but next time I'll make the waistband a bit too small so that it can stretch after insertion.

Anyway I am very proud of myself making jeans. It was daunting and definitely more involved than most sewing but surprisingly not hugely difficult. And I'm really happy with the fit and how they turned out. I'm even tempted to go and buy the aqua denim and make a matching pair. Akthough maybe not right away.

Averting Disaster in a Denim DuBarry

Getting this made was a bit of a saga. It's meant to be a transseasonal piece, but it's only now been finished, at the end of October. The pattern is early 1940s, but the denim and shortened hem takes it via the 1970s.

The pattern is one I bought at a vintage fair about four years ago, but have been a bit scared to use. It's DuBarry 5265, and it's extremely elegant. DuBarry was a pattern brand produced by Simplicity in the 1930s-40s, and they're hard to find and often pricey. This is the only one I own, and it's from 1942, so I'd been saving it until I found something I really wanted to sew it with. And so obviously denim was the perfect match for a classy 1940s pattern. I kind of think that the designers of the DuBarry patterns might be a bit horrified at making a dress out of - gasp! - denim, but I'm really happy with the choice of fabric.

I've been scared of working with denim for years. I've used almost every other fabric happily, even tricky fabrics like lace, lycra, velvet, and sequins with no problems. But denim? I've taken up jeans once or twice and it was a horrible experience. But I decided I wanted to conquer that fear and be able to use denim myself. Seeing lots of other sewing bloggers who've made their own jeans, denim jackets, etc, I wanted to join in the fun.

This lightweight denim is from Spotlight. I chose it because of the criss-crossed diamond/grid pattern and its nice dark wash. I thought that I'd make the diamonds match up nicely along the princess seams of the coat dress, and it would look fantatic. Well, after much frustration folding the fabric this way and that, I discovered that the grid lines are completely uneven! It was absolutely impossible to fold the fabric in a way that would let me get even the same pieces to have matching lines, let alone matching each piece's seams to its neighbouring piece. Coupled with the fabric being cut on a slight diagonal and undersized by the sales assistant, fitting the pattern pieces on the fabric was going to be difficult.

And then I compounded it all by for some stupid reason cutting out four side back pieces, and missing the centre front pieces. I didn't have enough fabric left over for the centre front pieces, and the pattern piece wouldn't fit properly on the extra side back pieces, so I was a bit stuck. And I still hadn't cut out the front facings, either, or the sleeves.  I didn't want to trek back to Spotlight just to get another foot of the fabric, so I looked at the extra side back pieces as well as the scrappy bits of fabric I had left to see what I could do. I had one rectangular piece about 60cm long left, which was good for the sleeves. Because that piece was smaller, those are probably the only part of the dress where the gridlines of the two sides actually match.

The centre front and front facings were going to be harder. I couldn't fit either pattern piece completely on the side back pieces, and I didn't have any offcuts large enough for them, either. In the end I realised I simply didn't have enough of the denim to cut all four pieces out completely. The facings were going to have to be at least partly in another fabric. Because the top of the facings is visible as part of the collar, I wanted them to be denim, but the rest of it could be in another fabric. So I focused first on the centre front pieces. They were going to have to be cut as two halves, joined at the waistline. So I marked the waistline on my pattern piece, and then cut the top halves out on my extra side back pieces, and the bottom halves on some of the leftover denim. I was then able to use the last bits of the extra side back pieces to cut out just enough of the front facings for the collar and top button - genuinely the exact minimum fabric I needed. It pays to be economical with pattern placement and fabric use! For the rest of the facings I was planning to be sensible and use something neutral, but going through my box of leftover fabric I found this one near the top and just couldn't resist. But pink and blue flowers on a bright yellow background is just so much better than navy or black cotton.

I have to confess that when I cut out this dress I didn't actually own jeans needles. I had some new size 14 and 16 needles, and the denim is lightweight, so I thought I'd give it a shot with them.
No. Bad idea.
It worked okay to join the two centre front pieces, but when I tried to do a seam my thread broke after about 10cm. The pattern does say that the dress is meant to hang basted (or, in my case, pinned) together for a minimum of 24 hours so that the hem can settle. It ended up being closer to 24 days by the time I'd bought jeans needles, made mum's dress, and was able to get back to this. But once I had the jeans needles, it sewed up like a dream. I'm sure those of you who've sewn with denim before are rolling your eyes at my bad sewing laziness, but at least I've now been converted to jeans needles.

I made a couple of changes to the pattern. As with all early 1940s patterns, the hem for this coat dress was originally below the knees. It's not really a length I like, not that I had enough fabric for it, anyway. So I shortened the hem to finish just above the knee, which makes it more wearable and fresh. I also decided on elbow length sleeves, rather than the short or long sleeve options of the pattern. The sleeves are also slightly narrowed in, because the original sleeves are gathered at the cuff. The sleeves also have fairly full sleeve heads which I was worried would be too puffy, but they're actually not all that big. But they do allow full movement in all directions with no pulling, which not all dress patterns do.

All the seams are once again French seams. Given this is a coat dress (and one that also works well as a coat), I wanted the seams to have a more polished finish, and I think the French seams do that. Of course it added a lot to the time it took to make the dress, and a bit of thought to the order I needed to do the seams in, but the final look is just right. The facings and hem are hand stitched, which took hours. In total there's got to be more than 20 hourse of sewing - both machine and hand - in this dress.

For the buttons, I decided that I wanted something that suited the denim more than that 1940s. This dress is basically vintage-modern, rather than vintage-costume, so I didn't think about matching the era. I briefly thought about metal buttons like jeans and denim jackets have, but decided they'd stand out too much, rather than blending in to the dress. So my next thought was dark wood. I didn't own any, so next time I was in the city I had a look in Lincraft at their button selection. They had some wood buttons, but they were all either too small, or too big, or too light. Then I spotted these coconut shell ones. I've actually used the back, rather than the lighter front, but they were just the colour and feel I wanted.

It's a coat dress, but making it with denim it really does work as both a coat and a dress. And yes, I am wearing it here with jeans so it is double denim - but at least they're maroon leopard print skinny jeans.

The wildly varying light levels in the photos are because of the weather. After storms yesterday and morning showers, I managed to catch a break in the rain, so the sun was sometimes out, sometimes behind the clouds, pretty much changing between every shot.

This took a long time and a lot of work to make, but final product does, I think, make up for the time and stress. And although it's a coat dress, it works as both a coat and a dress, so two items for the price of one! But definitely the effort of five.