Holy jeans of fire Batman!

Today I am attempting to fix a pair of very holey jeans for my friend.

I am nervous about this for two reasons, one they belong to a very good friend of mine and I don't want to fuck up his favourite pair of jeans, and I am not totally confident about being to get the sewing machine around the whole of the hole. (if you get me?) After researching and using common sense I am pretty sure I know what to do!

First of all I have cut the loose threads and fluffy bits away from the holes because they will get caught up in your machine and make angry scary noises and break it. Which is never good. Now I am going to cut the fabric to size for one of the holes. (Note he chose the fabric not me!) I am going to cut the fabric too big for the hole and then trim and double sew it down (that is what has been done to a hole already patched on them). On one video on youtube they said to cut the fabric diagonally to give the fabric some stretch if it doesn't have it originally. I am going to do this as I am using cotton not denim. (Not going to lie, because they are big bulky jeans and the patches are down the leg even the pinning was proving difficult. This does not bode well!)

 Ok so the first patch didn't go so well. After pinning I machine sewed from the front to see where I was going but the patch material doesn't hang straight so I am not happy with the finish.

pinned patch

patch machine sewed 

finished patch from front

So for the others I decided to pin and then tack around it and then sew from the back. This way I could keep the patch material straight and follow the tack line to know where the edge is.

Second patch tacked

The second one worked much better, but the third one, the biggest hole, again didn't work that well! Decided to leave it to see what my friend thinks and then if he agrees it is crap I may re-do and pin it whilst he is wearing them to get the way the fabric hangs right. Or at least attempt to!


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second patch finished - still scruffy round the edged though.

 The third patch was bigger and so more difficult, but managed to get it done eventually. These are the finished result. Do like how the material shows through, a good choice by my friend I think. So that is how I patched jeans! 

Monsters!

On one of my many shopping sprees in Cardiff I came across a roll of brightly coloured felt. Being the magpie that I am I just couldn't resist buying it! However that left me in the predicament of what to do with all this funky felt. Originally I thought of just using it all and turning it into a stripy pillow cover thing, but then I wanted to do something a bit more interesting as I want to make a proper patchwork pillow later on. After trawling the internet whilst attempting to get out of bed I came across a site which did felt monster plushes and thought they looked pretty cool! So that's what I did!

First off I designed a couple of monster patterns, various arms and legs and eyes and things. (I had to rescale my patterns as I hadn't checked how wide the felt I bought was. Top tip always check the measurements of your fabric before you begin!) My monsters are going to be very small and thin, a pocket monster if you will! When I was happy with my monster shape, and it was the right size for the fabric I cut it out and then cut the felt around it.

This monster (aka Faye's Monster) was meant to be cute, so it is a pink monster with added a tail design to the back along with two arms in blue, and one eye in yellow (this developed as I went along, originally it was going to have 3 but I decided to keep that bit simple. I cut out the eye arms and tail free with out a pattern and to size with finished product.

I hand sewed the pupil of the eye onto the base but machine sewed the tail and the arms onto the front and the back. Have to admit I am not overly happy with how the arms look so next time I think I will use a different stitch or hand sew them, but the tail with the zigzag pattern in purple looks kinda cool!

As I decided to sew the eye and mouth on by hand after I had put it together (random decision, trying out different techniques to see which works the best so you can machine sew them on before you stuff it) I then pinned the front and back together again and machine sewed them together using a small running stitch.

Then I had to turn it inside out. Sounds simple, but the gap I had left was a tad bit too small and due to the ears and legs also being small they didn't turn out as pronounced as I would have liked and I also needed to trim down the hem to get them to turn out more. I then stuffed it with regular batting and used a pen to push it into the corners. After this I (rather crappily) hand stitched the hole together and hurray! I have a fully stuffed monster!

Finally I hand sewed the eye on and then added mouth detail. I can't tell you which stitch I used as frankly I think I made it up but it turned out ok!

And there we have a finished pocket monster!

I'll be attempting different styles, patterns and techniques later on so will update this as I progress :)

The Start of a long Journey

I have always had a creative streak about me and now I am (hopefully) going to let it out to its full potential!

I already have a blog, so decided to start a new one for all the stuff I am going to make. It will mostly be bog standard basic things like pillows and toys but I have 2 orders for coats so eventually it will pick up on the skill level!

I'll give you a step by step progress of what I am doing with pictures in case anyone reading wants to have a go themselves :)