This wildly ambitious garment, repurposing a stockpile of old denim jeans, was my first attempt at “fashion”. Outerwear seemed the obvious route but a plain denim jacket felt underwhelming. I love taking big, calculated risks, so I decided to make a denim trench coat dress featuring a patchwork houndstooth pattern.
Quick Note: This post recounts the original process of a 5 year old project with some newfound insight. I made, and learned from, many mistakes which set a foundation for my future patchwork projects.
I started by making a muslin copy of the trench coat dress to help gauge how much denim I needed to patchwork. To expedite the process, I cut out a houndstooth shape on thick poster board to trace on my jeans like a stencil. Once I started sewing, I quickly realized my math wasn’t math-ing because I was short on denim to complete this design. I purchased some white and black denim to insert into compliment the existing color palette.
In hindsight, I don’t recommend this method for patchworking houndstooth. I should have broken a single houndstooth shape into four columns of vertical parallelograms, which creates a houndstooth shape when sewn together. Sewing together various sharp interlocking corners resulted in puckering which draws in my attenton. I’ll tackle another project for my houndstooth redemption in the future.
After hours of patchworking, I had panels to overlay, trace, and cut out the muslin template. A few stitches later, I had a finished trench dress. I wanted to tailor this trench dress the day of the photo shoot but my model backed out at the last minute. By the time we rescheduled the shoot with a new model, AJ, I was too anxious to get photos that I skipped tailoring. I’m absolutely proud of this garment but tailoring would have elevated this and reduced the denim’s extra bulk.
My friend and photographer, Jenna James, did an incredible job of highlighting AJ wearing the trench coat dress across downtown Seattle. This entire process feels like an encapsulation of a moment in time; proof a blossoming hobby, documented in a city I love, and supported by friends who collaborated to make this vision a reality. I’m forever grateful for this project and all those who helped make it happen.
