**UPDATE: This coat has been shortlisted as a finalist in the “Dressmaker of the Year” competition for Make it Today: Dressmaker magazine in both the refashioning and readers choice categories. If you’d like to vote for me you can do so here! You have until 25th April 2017.   OK, back to the post…….**

I think sometimes, because I run this challenge, there is a misconception that I am some kind of  refashioning queen. I certainly don’t regard myself in this way. I prefer to think of myself as a refashioning cheerleader.  Much less pressure! The Refashioners challenge has always been about inspiring other people. To showcase  what  they can do with refashioning, rather than showcasing my own skills. It may come as a surprise to some when I say, that I have never refashioned jeans in this way before. The extent of my jeans refashioning is mainly centered around re-fitting and reshaping existing jeans. I’ve never completely deconstructed jeans and turned them into something else. Never. So in selecting this year’s theme I was pushing myself as far out of my own comfort zone as anyone else! Of course, I was characteristically laid back about that. It’ll be fine, I thought! Won’t take long, I thought! Ha!  This project was characterised  by challenges, delays, changes of direction, obstacles and frustrations. But I got there!

I’d originally shelved this idea as “too ambitious” and decided on another idea, that would have been relatively quick and easy. (That’s MY comfort zone people!). As the projects from the other bloggers popped into my inbox it became apparent that great minds think alike. And my intended project was going to be similar to a few others. I wanted the series to offer as much variety of ideas as was humanly possible so I did an about turn about a fortnight ago and came right back to this idea…..

Quilted denim! Because of course, when it’s hotter than it’s been all year, sizzling temperatures are the perfect time to work on a big thick quilted coat. Naturally!  I knew I wanted a thigh length coat. I figured I could get enough fabric from 2 pairs of jeans (wrong!) for the shell and I had lining etc in my stash. I also knew I would have to piece the shell together from smaller component parts. The green jacket above gave me a massive eureka moment there. I fell in love with that diagonal yoke and the directional use of quilting lines and my idea was born….

I don’t think I was the only one to snap up the Tamarack Jacket by Grainline as soon as it was released! This was the perfect opportunity to crack it out.  I lengthened the front and back sections by 6″ and shortened the sleeves by 2″. Cut it out and sew it up, I thought. Hmmm….maybe I’ll toile to test the size & fit first before I cut into my scarce denim. Then ensues 3 days (I kid you not) of faffing and fitting around the sleeve/shoulder area. The drop shoulder of the pattern was not working for me at all. Twisting and drag lines that I was worried would translate weirdly to the thick quilted denim I had planned. (I have narrow forward shoulders) I tried in vain to fix it. I could probably have just gone with it. With hindsight. But my inner obsessive came out at this point (and stayed with me for the rest of this make) and I couldn’t let it lie. So I lopped the top off the pattern and spliced in a set in sleeve configuration. Which I then proceeded to fit within an inch of it’s life and after about 4 days of faff,  I had my base pattern…..

Turns out that switching to a set in sleeve was a good move. Not just for fit, but because the pattern piece is MUCH narrower that that of a drop sleeve. Handy when they need to be cut from narrow jeans legs….just saying 😉

I sat for a while staring at my pattern on the morning that I started this part. Swiping through my pinterest images. Basically procrastinating and being indecisive. I was still thinking about lines, directions, how to break up the pattern pieces. So I threw down a quick and very crude sketch to try and get things moving thinking I would end up doing a few sketches. But this one was enough….

 

It cleared the “log jam” in my brain and from then on I knew what I was working towards. So I began to transfer the style lines from my pencil sketch, onto the pattern itself…

From then I traced each piece of individually…

Added seam allowances, marked the grainline, and named my pattern pieces (that one made me snigger!)…

 

I ended up using 2 pairs of jeans (I actually needed 3 which I’ll come to in a minute) This pair was languishing on the £1 rail of the charity shop. Lot’s of panels, pockets, worn and wrinkled areas. They were very wide (44″ waist) but very short. And because of the construction or complex darts and pannelling “flat” fabric was sparse on this one. But I really liked the denim and thought the pocket shadows on this pair would be awesome…so they went home with me…

The second pair (above) was a pair of size 10 fitted jeans donated to me by a friend when they no longer fit. Normally size 10 fitted jeans would not be “up there” when it comes to amount of useable fabric. However….

…these were huge bell bottom jeans! Ha! They provided the perfect amount of fabric from which to cut all four pieces for the bottom of my coat..

Cut on the cross grain…the longer back pieces were cut from the widest part of the leg at the bottom (so the outer leg seam now runs horizontally across my pattern piece) and the shorter front piece cut from the middle part of the leg….also on the cross grain.

One problem you may encounter with more fitted/flared/shaped jeans is the fabric not laying flat once you’ve cut up the inseam. This is due to the shaping built into the curved side seam.

On the reverse, look what happens to the fabric either side of the seam line when you pinch it together….

Essentially you can add some shaping of your own at that side seam to counteract the original shaping to get the fabric to lay flat 😉

Middle sections of the coat were cut from the upper legs of the £1 jeans.  I took my time to line up the details on the fabric (pocket shadows etc) so that they would be symmetrical on the finished coat…

When deconstructed…because of all the panels on these nutty jeans…Apart from the torso area, the pieces I was left with after this were actually quite narrow! Which was a pain in the arse because I had planned on cutting my yokes and sleeves from that pair of jeans too. There was no way THAT was happening…

I still had the bum part of the bell bottoms left so I played around for a while seeing if I could squeeze them out of that. I could….but it wasn’t ideal. It would be wonky off grain (like, not even cross grain!) and I would have original seams intersect at the armhole where I was already worried about bulk. Plus I had these sections earmarked to cut pockets and binding from…

My project had stalled. It became apparent that I would need a 3rd pair of jeans to have enough fabric for the yoke and sleeves to match. (Another design element that I had become obsessed with). Problem was I didn’t have another pair of jeans and a scour of the local charity shops, twice,  proved fruitless. I couldn’t find a pair of jeans in the right weight of denim. (Because of the quilting I had planned I needed lightweight denim; which the other two pairs were). In the end I had to use a denim remnant from my stash if I had any hope of getting this finished in time. I couldn’t afford to wait for the right pair of jeans….so on this occasion I conceded defeat and the yokes and sleeves are cut from stash fabric. I was gutted by this BUT it is TOTALLY possible to get those pieces (and the sleeves) out of a pair of jeans if you have them as evidenced by the measurements shown below…

I do feel a little like I “let the side down” here. I overestimated the fabric I would have from my £1 pair of jeans and got caught out because of all the panelling etc. But I had to move on and finish this thing….if I could have waited and found that third pair of jeans I would have done. But at this stage, and this close to deadline….I had to compromise.

Moving on…I used what I had left to cut bias strips for the edge binding…

I cut strips in the 3 different colours of denim I used so each section of the coat opening and hem would be bound in it’s corresponding denim…

This is all I was left with from the bell bottoms. The front torso area….which I used to cut the pockets for the coat…

 

Before I could begin construction there were some holes and rips in some of the pieces I had cut…some from a slipped seam ripper…

….and some from where I had removed the rivets during deconstruction…

A pretty simple fix from the underside …

I just applied patches of interfacing to protect against future tearing etc…

With all my pieces now cut I began assembling my shell. My first attempt at joining the yoke to the middle was a fudge…

I’d just gone onto auto pilot and aligned raw edges and stitched. When I turned it out it was, of course, off!!

So as a reminder for anyone else who may want to attempt this, the pieces need to be joined so the seamlines match. NOT the raw edges…so the whole thing is sewn slightly offset. By an amount equal to your seam allowance…

And then everything lines up perfectly!

Front sections were joined top middle and bottom. Back section is the same and then joined together with a CB seam…

I get really obsessed with getting intersecting seams to line up. I pinned at these points first and foremost. With the pin going directly through the seamlines on both layers to ensure the are lined up…

This gives me accurate alignment where several seams intersect like at the point of this back yoke (and makes me feel “like a boss!”)

The lining I used had also come from a charity shop several months ago. It had the softest flannel underside and the shiniest satin RS. It had obviously been exposed to light whilst folded because there was fading along all the fold lines. It had turned a peachy colour in those areas which I actually really liked. So I decided to make a subtle feature out of it  and found a variegated peach/thread with shades of pale khaki and cream in it to use for the quilting lines on this side of the fabric…(That streak of faded peach is placed centrally on the back piece of the finished coat lining. Only I can see it. That’s how obsessed I got with detail and symmetry on this make!!)

I did a few practice swatches and loved that effect in particular…

The quilting part itself presented a couple of challenges. Not least because the sturdy nature of denim kind of fights the batting..and instead of the batting pushing the denim up…the denim is inclined to flatten the batting…which diminishes the look of the quilting…

 

In the end I found I had to use a pretty thick (cotton) batting in order to get the “loft” I needed to make the quilting visible. This had a knock on effect with the overall sturdiness of the finished garment. This was going to be one seriously thick and sturdy coat!!

I made a quilt sandwich for each piece and was ready to get started quilting. This is the extent of my quilting experience to date. I am NO expert, lol!

I began by hand basting length wise and width wise. I did NOT want this shifting or distorting. Construction of this thick wadge of quilt sandwich was going to be tricky enough without that. So baste people. Definitely baste. This wadding was self adhesive but denim didn’t stick as effectively to it as quilting cotton. So it was definitely worth the added “security” not to skip this step!

I first quilted the diagonal yoke seam and the horizontal hip seam….then laid down my vertical quilting lines between those two points….using my variegated thread on my bobbin…

And dark thread on the top…

I used 1″ masking tape as a quilting guide to keep my lines straight and evenly spaced. Starting in the middle and working outwards. I started and finished my lines of stitching just a fraction inside those diagonal yoke and horizontal hip stitching lines and left loooong tails of thread….

Which I then secured by hand and buried within the quilting channels. I was determined to achieve a clean finish on the inside and have all the quilting lines meet and line up perfectly on the lining where any mistakes would be really obvious. I counted, 172 thread tails secured and buried by hand to achieve that finish…

But it was well worth it. That back piece in particular, the quilting lines on that lining, remain one of my favourite elements of this coat, to the point where I almost want to wear it inside out, lol!

I repeated this process on all 5 pattern pieces, edge stitch all around the edges of my pattern pieces and cut away the excess batting/lining and I was ready to finally construct this thing!

I won’t go step by step into the actual construction because that is all in the pattern instructions for the Tamarack jacket. But I will share with you the parts that go “off pattern”. Including a solution I found for the bulk element of this make…the pattern is designed for lighter weight fabrics so the seams wouldn’t be as thick as this!

As you can see on this shoulder seam…pressing these seams flat was gonna be a challenge. Super thick!

I peeled back the lining and trimmed the batting right up to the seam line…

Ta dah! Bulk reduced…

…and seam presses flat!

I repeated that process on shoulder seams and side seams and I was ready to insert my sleeves which had me all kinds of scared. Because…

Well….these suckers are so thick they stand up on their own, ha ha!! This picture kills me every time I look at it. This was becoming more like an engineering project than dressmaking. At this stage I was working right at the limits of what my little Janome could cope with…every line of stitching, every bit of binding…everything added just a liiiiitle bit more bulk. I swear my little Janome whimpered when I approached her with these…

Basting the sleeve in place was a must. Luckily I had removed a great deal of ease from the sleeve cap so easing the sleeve head in was relatively trouble free.

And ta dah!  They were in! I basically had my coat!

 

Of course a coat needs pockets. What I really wanted was a nice clean welt or inseam pocket that wouldn’t visually disrupt the quiltiing lines of the bottom section. But I had to compromise here. The fabric was just too thick for the turning required for that kind of pocket. So patch it would have to be.

I played with a couple of ideas. The one below was what I wanted. The angled pocket opening echoes the same angle as the yoke, and the curved corner echoes the curve of the hem…(see….told you I was getting obsessed with symmetry)

Buuuut I didn’t have enough fabric left for that (of course not. That would be too helpful, lol!) so I squeezed what I could out of the leftovers of the bell bottom jeans. My plan was to quilt them so that the quilt lines matched the ones on the coat itself. Blending the pockets visually with the coat. But I was worried about adding more bulk and used only a thin layer of batting on the pockets so it didn’t work out. The pockets are actually the only part of this coat that niggle me a little. But you gotta have pockets on a winter coat, right?

Last, but definitely not least is the 28″ chunky gold zip that finishes this make off. Basted then rebasted in place to ensure that when it’s zipped up, all those points at the yoke and hip line up perfectly…

All the binding is single fold, in an effort to reduce bulk, and edge stitched in place. So there’s a very slight raw edge finish to all the binding. Which actually I really like. I like all the contrasts of this make. The utility/worn feel of the denim, with the luxury feel of the lining and gold zip, and the precision of the quilting against the rawness of the denim edges. It’s a coat of contrasts. Of juxtaposition if you like. It’s a coat of many elements. It’s a coat of blood, sweat (literally) and stress.  It’s definitely one of a kind. And I absolutely love it and couldn’t be prouder. Even though it was a bitch to me at times I wholeheartedly forgive it. All I can say is…it better be a bloody cold winter this year after all this! 😉

Turns out, this project, was the hardest, most stressful, and longest I have ever undertaken (largely because I am my own worst enemy and became somewhat obsessed and uncompromising). But it was also the most satisfying because, despite (or maybe because) of the challenges and the blood, sweat and near tears that went into this, (I didn’t quite cry, but “head in hands with bewildered look” became a firm favourite during this make.)  I persevered.  And eventually, I won.  And I’ve ended up with a garment  that I am SO proud of.  That I look at and think, I can’t believe I actually made that! You see, I think when we challenge and push ourselves, we find we are capable of much much more than we ever thought.

So, are you ready to challenge yourself too? This is me, signing off, pouring myself a stiff gin, and handing the baton to you guys for a month. Show us what you got people!!!

You can see all this month’s awesome inspiration posts here. And if you’re inspired to get your refashion on and enter the Community Challenge and be in with a chance of winning some epic prizes…DO IT! Deadline for entries is 30th Sept. Midnight GMT.

….I think you’ve got the idea now right? Essentially we want you to refashion some jeans! (You can find the full details/small print of the brief here). BUT, if you want to be in with a chance of winning one of these amazing prize packages you need to SHARE that refashion with us in one of the following ways:

• On Instagram: Share a pic using the hashtags #therefashioners2016  and #jeanius
• On Pinterest: There is a community board here where you can pin your makes. (You will need to request an invite to join)
• On Facebook: There is a community board here where you can post your makes (You will need to request an invite to join)

Only entries shared via the above 3 methods will be entered into the competition. Closing date for entries is 30th September 2016 Midnight GMT. Good luck!!