Sequin Denim Jacket

Hey, when it’s your 10 year anniversary, why just stress yourself out planning a five week international holiday, when you can do that AND stress yourself out about vacation crafts no-one is expecting you to make but your inner craft demon makes it 100% essential for the vacation to be successful? Welcome to my mid-2019.

Yes, I realise this post is about a year overdue and I have my reasons - no, I’m not telling you. Vacation planning was a very anxious time in my life. It was a trip I had been imagining for 10 years. My partner and I were about to go on a five week tour of the USA. It was costing a lot of money, and it required a lot of discussion, compromise and research. It’s just how we do things in this house. We are not freewheeling, go with the flow people. We can tolerate probably about 10% freewheelingness. We were also building up our savings hot on the back of purchasing our first house at the peak of the market.

But I had it set in my mind that there were a number of things I needed to craft to make this trip the most awesome trip that it could be. In the end I didn’t make even a quarter of what I had planned as the genuine anxiety about the cost of the trip hindered my progress. However, I did have time to make the most amazing denim jacket I could ever own.

10 Year Anniversary Denim Jacket

I purchased the jacket for around $30 from Target, or Kmart or somewhere cheap like that. I haven’t owned a denim jacket since high school and wasn’t sure if I could pull off the look, so didn’t want to invest too much cash into the project. I even had to message my partner to find out which double denim combo was the most perfect retro combo for the trip (the answer is - the light denim jacket).

Originally I had planned to embroider the jacket with a full “I’m taking my Harley across the continental US, and a bald headed eagle covers the entire back of my black leather jacket” style embroidery, but in the end I opted for a simple, but glitzy, but time consuming, hand-sequined “10”. It was so very ‘minimalist/lazy’ of me.

I had no idea how to hand-sequin onto a denim jacket. I decided first off that I probably didn’t need to sequin directly onto the jacket. My fingers are not strong enough to pierce the denim that many times, and besides, I had little idea of what I was doing.

I started by finding an appropriate font on the computer and then printing out the digits on paper at the size that I wanted them to be for the jacket. I carefully cut these out to create my template.

I selected a white felt I had in my craft stash and ironed on some iron-on interfacing so that the felt would hold its shape during the sequinning.

I rifled through the stash of sequins and beads my mum had loaned me and I picked a delightfully vibrant pink and blue sequin and a clear bead. Or seed I think they call the beads when they are that small - don’t quote me.

Starting from the centre of each digit I painstakingly hand stitched the sequins on following a concentric loop the shape of the digit, overlapping the sequins about half of their width.

Once finished I decided to iron the patches so they were flat. DO NOT IRON THE PATCHES. Luckily I only ironed one of them but guess what - sequins are made of plastic and irons are hot. A large area of the sequins suffered heat damage and they flattened out loosing all their sparkle. This was not acceptable. I unpicked the worst of the impacted sequins and re-stitched a new set in place - only now I was starting to run short of sequins and beads/seeds. I had to do some clever spacing to ensure I could cover the surface area.

With repairs completed I was now able to attach the two patches to the jacket. After careful positioning and a few pins to secure them in place I slip-stitched around the edges. I thought I was finished with the jacket but then I remembered I had some pink lace trim and it told me that it wanted to be on the jacket as well….

Jacket complete. Let the tour of awesomeness begin!

Jacket enjoying the view at Top of the Rock, New York

Jacket photobombing on The Highline, New York

Jacket playing pin ball in Brooklyn

Jacket riding the Amtrak to Washington DC

Jacket being secretly engaged at Falling Water, Bear Run

Jacket admiring the architecture at Falling Water, Bear Run

Jacket trying to decide if it should buy the sneakers, Las Vegas (it did buy the sneakers)