When it comes to sustainability, a major drawback for most is the price that brands aim their products at. And I will also agree that it’s definitely not accessible to the majority, although after this project I can understand why businesses do. After the time and effort that goes into each piece that I sew, I have a new-found respect to those who make clothing after embarking on my own learning journey.
In the past, I’ve dabbled with making a hat for myself from an old pair of jeans, but this time I wanted to try and challenge myself yet again with something that was definitely way out of my skill level. I’d had the inspiration to create a denim blazer for some time, after seeing a collection from Ksenia Schnaider, that reuses old jeans and magically creates coats, skirts, shoes, hats, even keyrings.
I feel that my hopes and expectations were quite high with this project, meaning that my perfectionism was fully activated; which when you’re learning something for the first time, probably isn’t the best headspace to be in. As I soon realised here, you live to learn with sewing. I documented the whole thing over on my YouTube channel, if you want the full talk-through experience, but just know that it wasn’t exactly plain sailing to get to where we are today with this piece.
You may realise that, no, this isn’t an entire blazer. In fact, let’s call it a longline waistcoat, shall we? And as for working with denim, it must have been a series of unfortunate events with the jeans I had, because bleaching this was no walk in the park. I’m pretty sure I spent an entire week trying to perfect the colour of my denim, and after many bleach fumes were passively inhaled, in the end I was simply happy to have any denim left at all. Who knew over-bleaching denim was a thing?
After one of the most difficult sewing projects I’ve done thus far, I must say I’m pretty proud of the fact that I tackled my first ever jacket facings and lapels. That was something that really scared me going into this, but with a little perseverance and a lot of patience, we got there in the end – Even if it meant we had to abandon some sleeves in the process.
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