Hey friends,

I don’t know about you but as a craft minded person I sort of have a craft bucket list of all the things I’d really like to make (or at least have a go at!) something I’ve always wanted to create is an amazingly embroidered one-of-a-kind denim jacket!

I found this particular jacket at my local thrift joint about eight months ago and totally fell in love with its ridiculously long sleeves, its a bit big but the sleeves are just too cool, plus its really soft.

Its hung on the back of my bedroom door ever since while I figured out what pattern I wanted to decorate it with. There are three things I really love in life, one is butterflies the second is anything Tolkien related and the third is Alice In Wonderland (the 50’s Disney cartoon not the Tim Burton versions) so I’ve decided to start embroidering it with the wildflowers from the cartoon, piece by piece starting on the back panel.

I absolutely adore the 1951 movie and the flower illustrations are so bright and colourful I thought it would work well against the dark blue denim.

The design process is always fun and I’m pretty sure that it will change as I go along and the flowers will all move about, but I started by drawing a whole bunch of the cartoons and photocopying them onto some stick and stitch paper (its so cool) which makes the whole process easier – although its beginning to look a little scruffy at the edges where I keep taking my hoop off as I don’t want the denim to stretch out of shape.

When I’ve finally finished it the stick and stitch paper will come into its own as its dissolves when wet!

For each flower I start by blocking in the main colour and then go back and shade before finally adding the tiny black stitches to create the cartoon style outlines. Its a killer on my fingers and I can’t actually embroider it for too long at a time as its quite hard to push the needle through the denim (and I hate wearing thimbles) so far I’m pretty pleased, the rose is looking as 3-d as I hoped it would in my head. My plan after finishing the rose and daisy is to remove the design and re-print it but only stick one flower on at a time, I’m hoping it will seem less daunting if I do it bit by bit.

I reckon it’s going to take many months if not almost a year and I’d like to add other details onto the cuffs or pockets like maybe the bread and butterflies or other wonderland insects.

In a month or two I’m going to post an update to track how everything’s progressing!

So that’s it for this weeks denim-jacket-project post…I hope you enjoyed it, Do you have a craft bucket list? Next week I’m hoping to post my first butterfly tale of 2025!!

As always thank you so much for reading my friends, and have a lovely week!