How To: Customise your Denim Jacket

Hey guys!

So I have had a lot of good responses on my How To blog posts and I thought I would make a post on how I was customising my denim jacket. I got this denim jacket in the vintage section in Urban Outfitters at the back in a very large size as I wanted it to be oversized. There were loads of versions of this jacket available in different colours, brands and sizes, and trust me I tried pretty much all of them on, but I loved the bleach dark denim look and it was also at a bargain price for a Levi Strauss jacket!

   

 Anyways, I was trying to think how I could customise this jacket to make it more unique, as usual for me, and I decided that I wanted to add a piece of material to the back panel. Something that would complement the colours of the jacket, but something that would stand out too.

 I saw this head dress piece in a Zambian stall in the Ethical Market on Castle Street in Edinburgh and as soon as I saw it I knew it would be great for my jacket! The Zambian woman was really helpful and was showing me all her products (trust me there were many!) but I knew I had to buy this one. She was so proud and enthusiastic of her products so I didn't tell her of my plan to cut her work up...but she was happy I bought it! Anyways for customising your own piece of clothing you can choose any piece of materials you wish.

Put the material next to the panel to see where to cut it to fill the piece you want covered. For mine I realised there was not enough of it to fit the whole area but I thought I would give it a patchwork feel by using the excess material to cover the rest of the panel.

 Using a chalk pencil, outline where you want your material to end and where you want the clothing piece to start. This is the line of where you will be cutting the fabric before sewing it to the jacket!

 Cut the fabric roughly near the line to check the material's at the right size and to give it some space for error when sewing which you could trim off afterwards. Pin the material to the jacket now so that it will not slip away when sewing.

 There were two sections at either end of the panel that I wanted to be filled but there wasn't enough material (grrrrrrr) but using the rest of the material I cut two sections to fill the gaps and I pinned them on too!

 This is actually my mum's sewing machine that I used because mine is smaller and the denim is really thick so I didn't think it would let the material through to sew. You could hand stitch this if you wanted but that would take ages so I thought this was easier. I might make another post on how to thread the machine and how to sew the basics later, but for this post I thought I would keep it relatively vague but look out for another post on this!

 Anyways, I took a piece of excess material and experimented with the different types of stitch available on the machine and I went for the biggest zig-zig stitch there, but you can use any stitch you like!

You can then go ahead in sewing around the edges of the material making sure the material and the thread are tight and secure so that the material will stay on the denim once sown on.

 Unless you are like me and the material won't fit and you are going for the patchwork look, you won't have to do this, but if so then sew down the divide between the parts of material. You could use a less obvious stitch if you don't want to make it obvious but I thought the stitch added to the rugged look of the oversized jacket!

 Once you have finished sewing you then turn the jacket over to the other side to cut the ends of the thread off to make it a bit neater, and to check that the thread has actually gone through!!

 This is the finished customised panel on this denim jacket and I am so happy with how it turned out! It was actually really easy to do and took me about an hour but it was totally worth it and it feels very secure so I'm pretty sure it won't fall off! You can try this method with any other type of material, stitch, or piece of clothing so feel free to get creative and start sewing!

I really hope you enjoyed this blog and I love doing posts like this so watch out for more!

Enjoy xxxx