Boro sleeves

Well, this is a work in progress.  I did a chalkline grid on the front for the first embellishment.  It worked okay but I thought I would try pen on the back to see if I like that better.  It is much easier to see but the piece I used to make the grid was larger and I didn't like that as well.

I did an buttonhole stitch around  big hole and then just randomly stitched around it.  My first attempt had the buttonhole stitch backwards and so I had to take all that out and redo it with the overcast on the inside instead of the outside of the circle.

I think it looks like a beehive.  I'm not sure I like it so it might not get used.

This is the pair of jeans that I decided to use for the boro method of mending.  

And here are the boro patches on the leg of the jeans.

This is the embellishment close-up.  It was fun to do.  I'm not sure if I'll do more stitches or not.  It seemed very overwhelming yesterday with figuring out what pattern to use . . . what size?  What fabrics should I use for the raw edged patches?  How did I want to arrange the patches, what stitches did I want to do for embellishment?  It got to be too much and I just left the sewing room and came upstairs to lay down.

But, it didn't take long to find myself back in the sewing room.  I figured out I just need to do one part at a time and not try to plan the whole thing out ahead of time.  Here is the embellishment on the back.  It covered the rips and worn out places but it didn't really repair them per se. 

And this is the right sleeve pieced, patched, and embellished.  I need to unpick all that stitching on the left seam (tedious) and then I want to top stitch the seams.  The one on the left will just get stitched by machine and the right one might get a strip of embellishment.  One thing at a time  I'm not sure if I've finished embellishing the patches or not.  

The thing with Sashiko is you can just keep going until all the blank spaces are full.

Here is the other sleeve in progress.  I basted it down and now I need to decide what stitches I want on top.

This is a fun project.  I wake up each morning with ideas spinning in my head. 

I'm cutting this out as a medium but I hope it's not too big.  Normally I am at least a medium (12-14), sometimes large but I've lost 10 lbs. over the summer/fall.  I had to go on a special diet for health reasons and now I don't know what size I've become.  I went to buy sweatshirts last week and came home with two XS ones.  It doesn't make any sense.   

I  better go get busy with the quilt on the frames because past experience has taught me that the only way to get a quilt done is work on it. 😅

Robin

Also I've been asked what it's like sewing on denim.  I've been doing "Big Stitch" on my recent quilts so it's not an adjustment using a very large needle and sewing with thicker thread.  The Boro approach has you loading up your needle with stitches and then pulling the thread through all of them at once.  I find that very hard.  So, I'm just sewing one or two stitches at a time.  I'm using my regular thimble - not the one suggested in Sashiko instructions.