Ciao dear Needleworking Friends!

I wanted to share the very first steps of this project, which I began this morning in response to the #needleworkyourjeans challenge!

I have 3 pairs of old jeans, salvaged from Sergio's house, as there were many clothes and linens there which will be ruined shortly (many are already ruined and had to be put into the recycling bin), if I didn't take them away and make something new out of...

This is a sketch which may or may not end up resembling the final garment!

I have a feeling about a kind of autumn or mild winter coat, inspired vaguely by Gary Graham's designs that I saw on Making The Cut TV show. I never take directly from life or from other folks, but in this case I have a kind of sense of the general structure that Gary's work picks up on, plus his referencing the past. I love how he uses structured heavier fabrics, like denim, to inspire his designs, and how he resuses old textiles or remakes with elements from old patterns.

I love this re-invention, which is more like co-creation/ collaboration, with designers of the past.

photo taken from the book Isle Of Arran Heritage - The Arran High School Project, 2002 (which I participated in when I was in my first years of high school, in the late 1980s)

I love to reference without speaking directly to an element of the past. When I think of shapes in a new garment I'm making from scratch, I often remenisce in my imagination, about older fashions, like a photo of the artist Jessie M King, taken outside my family house in High Corrie on the Isle of Arran, around the 1920s or suchlike: I couldn't find a copy of that photo in particular, but above is the closest I can get to it - of some folks outside the shop in Pirnmill, on the north end of the island, possibly at a similar time. I adore black clothing with white details in particular, from my own culture, as denim came more recently to rural Scotland.

I adore the tailoring and stronger structures of older times, in which the garments were also much more weather-oriented, more practical - and modest! I'll try to incorporate good form and tailoring into this coat, if I am able!

Anyways: just wanted to make this quick sharing, to keep me motivated and accountable: I cannot guarantee I'll finish this coat in the alloted time for this challenge, but I will endeavour to! I am doing a lot of stitch-unpicking, and have sewed one tiny strip on the machine, to keep the thing held together more firmly, whilst I figure out how to join the rest of it together...

Much love, all!