Me Made June Challenge

After much anticipation and thought I have decided to take on Zoe's Me Made June Challenge. The idea of the challenge is to wear more of your own creations for one months. I believe this will help them get into the rotation of of ones wardrobe so I really love these types of challenges. This is my first time I will be going at it. So I'll be trying to keep it simple. I can't promise I will post daily but I will be posting what I wear. Hope you"ll join in the fun.

I, Jen of http://jtscloset-jen.blogspot.com/, sign up as a participant of Me-Made-June '11. I endeavour to wear
at least 3 of my self made garments each week for the duration of June 2011'

The Jean Class Begins

Hi everyone. Sorry about the lack of posting. In the mean time I've been busy making a few more pairs of Lutterloh lounge pant for the gym and a few more tops. I'll post a review of the projects when there is a bit more time.

I wanted to give you an update about the denim and my question about the best way to learn. After much though I decided to pass up for the present on the Jeans for Everybody DVD. I think it maybe an excellent product and it will remain on my wish list. Instead I decided to take the New Zealand Lutterloh class Jeans Designing. I am very excited about this class. Sonja's materials for the class are excellent and well written. A master pattern to work from comes with the class materials and Sonja makes herself available for questions 4 times a year during each class running session. I will be taking more classes in the future. 

On to the meat and potatoes of this post. I have not got very far on my jeans yet but I thought I would give you a few little glimpses of the pattern, layout and front pocket construction.

 One challenge with Lutterloh is making sure you have your grain lines in the correct place. The information both in this class and the instructions in Sonya's ebook helped with this.

 The pocket construction was not as complicated as one might expect. But let me tell you using the machine needles made for denim really helped. I also purchased a walking foot for the sewing machine and was surprised that it sewed through 5 layers of denim no problem.









 Another helpful tip was to use my overcast/edger foot to do my double row of top stitching. It kept the top stitching fairly even. And it was very easy to use my machines needle positions to create the look.

Also following the instructions from the class on making a French seam my front pocket bags look wonderful. I cut the whole pocket from butterfly quilting cotton that my mothers friend gave me for free.  Love it. That is all I have to share today. Happy sewing and I will keep this project updated for you.