Today is Day Five of celebrating Earth Day, which I will be doing for the entire week! I hope to provide ideas and useful tips showing you how to use items that would either have been thrown out, dumped off at the thrift-store, or are just perhaps forgotten.

Today is also Friday’s Favorites: Jean Jackets!!!

Let’s talk a little bit more about recycling, Upcycling, and having a rummage through your closets, today we are looking for jeans and jean jackets. If you would like to learn more about re-purposing and updating your wardrobe, see my lecture, (with handout) on Creative Spark, Upcycle It with Embellishments.

Blue Jean Baby, LA Lady! I am a jean girl, I admit it, when I go out for casual events, that is what I am wearing, a pair of Gloria Vanderbilt’s Amanda jeans, and a jean jacket. Below are a few of my favorite “fancier” jean jackets. For more suggestions on using denim fabrics see my post Recycled Blue Jeans and Denim Fabric.

1. Phred’s Jean Jacket: My friend Phred, created this jacket from 6 or 7 pairs of jeans that he found at several different thrift stores. He made this jacket in the 70’s. At some point he gave it to me, and it has been worn at various times, by both myself and my daughter. As you can imagine the raw edges of the jeans had frayed through the years. So I sat down one week, and trimmed off all the frayed edges, and then repaired any rips that had occurred. I then took 2 colors of perle cotton #5, and hand-stitched a running stitch around the edge of each square. I added in some white vintage buttons, and a few corsages that I made from old ties. VOILA a star was re-born.
2. Ribbonwork Jean Jacket: This is a jacket that I found at the thrift store, I think that it cost $9.99. I embellished it with a multitude of ribbonwork flowers and leaves that were made from a variety of ribbons. The majority of the flowers were made using the instructions included in my books, some were prototypes that I made during the design process. I love working with ribbon, as you can tell from my two ribbonwork books: Ribbonwork Gardens and Ribbonwork Flowers, by C&T Publishing.

Hanky Trimmed Jean Jacket: I bought this jacket at the thrift store as well, and it was such a fun project to work on. The jacket already had one layer of hankies sewn to the bottom edge, and over the pocket, but it seemed plain to me. So, I decided to add one more layer of hankies over the first layer on the bottom edge. I took the remaining hanky halves, and folded stitched these into butterflies. I added in ribbon to cover the raw edges of the new layer of hankies, and to create linear interest. I added in quite a few buttons, and embroidered details to the lapels, butterflies, flowers, and buttons. The ribbonwork flowers can be found in my book Creative Embroidery, Mixing the Old with the New, and my two other ribbonwork books.

Here are some other tips to live by:

• Patch it.
• Adorn it.
• Re-work it.

Happy Earth Week, be kind to her, she is the only one we have. ~Christen