A little over a year ago I was shopping in a thrift store and found a nice Levi denim jacket. I quickly bought that jacket and knew I would come up with a way to make it unique to me. So, more than a year has passed and I was still waiting for that great idea to make this jacket truly mine.
And then my friend who is a machine embroidery digitizer extraordinaire, Karen Parker sent me a picture of the granny square she had just digitized for yarn couching with the embroidery machine. Being the kind of friend I am I begged and groveled for her to send me the design file. I knew when I saw the picture of that granny square that my jacket was going to be fabulous.
You may be scratching your head right now saying what is yarn couching……it is a technique that allows you to apply yarn fabric surfaces to create unique embellishments. What you are seeing in the picture is yarn stitched on to the back of the jacket.
On the back of the back of the jacket I yarn couched the large granny square. And then I admired my work and my jacket but as I looked at it more, I thought that granny square looks rather lonely and the back of my jacket is great but the front looks rather plain. I knew the large granny square was too big for the front of the jacket but then I remembered another design for a bag that my friend Karen had created, the Charlie O Tote Embroidered Granny Squares, you can find this pattern here Included in the Charlie O Tote is a single small granny square. This pattern makes an amazing bag but for my jacket I needed just a single smallish granny square. I machine embroidered a granny square above each of the pockets on my jacket. And now I think my thrift store Levi denim jacket looks pretty unique.
And now I think my thrift store Levi denim jacket looks pretty unique.
So a great big thank you to my friend, digitizer extrodanaire, Karen Parker. And special thanks to my model.