Last week, I took a short week off to tidy up my little home because, with the opening of the new Woluwe shop and my work, I had let a few household chores slide a bit 😂! In life, you have to choose your priorities!
So I “made the most” of half the week to tidy up and the other half to really rest! I used the opportunity to sort out my sewing room and my wardrobe. The sewing room alone took me a whole day 😂! And among my things I found... a pair of Sunshine jeans by Iam Patterns, already cut out and overlocked, with an embroidered pocket I had started.
When I tidied my wardrobe, I realised that my trouser collection could do with a little boost... you can probably see where this is going, right?
So, without wasting any time, I used my half-week off to finish my new jeans — and I absolutely love them ❤️!
Ready to see them?
Let’s go!
First of all, let’s talk about the jeans pattern: the Sunshine jeans by Iam Patterns
The Sunshine jeans come in two versions from Iam Patterns:
- a balloon/slouchy cut
- a straight cut.
They have all the classic details you expect from jeans:
- slanted front pockets,
- a coin pocket,
- patch pockets on the back,
- rivets,
- a fly front,
- a waistband with belt loops
- topstitching
In short, all the hallmarks of a proper pair of jeans! They also have a high waist, which I find very feminine.
The pattern is available in both printed and PDF versions in our shops and on the website: sizes 34 to 52 as a PDF, and sizes 36 to 46 as a paper pattern.
One thing I really like about Iam Patterns is that they provide the finished garment measurements. That means you can use them to choose the size that will suit you best, not only according to your body measurements but also according to the fit you want — loose or closer to the body.
Sunshine can be sewn in a fabric with or without stretch.
The two fit options
What you need in your sewing basket to make a Sunshine (or any other pair of jeans, for that matter!)
To sew the Sunshine jeans, you will need:
- denim (or corduroy/velvet, twill, gabardine...)
- cotton poplin for the front pocket bags (a fine, tightly woven fabric)
- fusible interfacing, particularly for the fly and waistband
- one 12 cm non-separating metal or polyester zip
- one 18 mm jeans button
- rivets to reinforce the front and back pocket openings (optional)
- sewing thread
- overlocker thread cones (optional but recommended)
- and don’t forget a denim needle and suitable thread
The technical points
Sewing a pair of jeans is not necessarily difficult, but it does require patience and, above all, precision. You also have to accept that industrial jeans-construction techniques cannot always be reproduced exactly at home, so some finishes need to be adapted to domestic sewing machines. That said, you can still achieve very nice results with a mid-range home machine — motor power makes a big difference when sewing through multiple thick layers.
For those two reasons, this is a project best suited to people who already have solid sewing experience, because it takes a fair amount of control and technique to create a garment that is satisfying both to sew and to wear.
To make Sunshine, you will need to be comfortable with the following techniques:
- making patch pockets, coin pockets and slanted pockets
- topstitching
- overlocking/serging
- sewing a fly front
- making belt loops
- attaching a waistband
- setting rivets
- sewing a buttonhole and attaching a button
- hemming
-
switching confidently between different stitches on your sewing machine
Constructing the fly
Topstitching the pockets
If you would like to make a pair of jeans but are nervous about tackling the project on your own, don’t worry! We have a course specifically dedicated to this theme 😉, as well as a technical course on sewing a fly, and they really are great classes! You can find our sewing-course offer here.
And now, let’s move on to the arcuates!
“Arcu” what? ... Arcuate! But what exactly is it?
After creating more and more of them and having fun customising them, I thought it was time to lift the veil on this slightly mysterious term — especially because it can take us a long way creatively!
Definition
You may already have guessed that “arcuate” is an English word. It means arched or curved... can you guess where the “arches” are on a pair of jeans?
Arcuates are the decorative stitch patterns on the back patch pockets of jeans. They are also known as “back-pocket signatures”.
A little history
As you probably already know, we owe a lot to Mr Levi Strauss when it comes to the creation of jeans... so it is hardly surprising that we need to mention this visionary figure again!
Levi’s is considered the first brand to have used an arcuate on the back pockets of its very first blue jeans in 1873. Originally decorative, arcuates also helped reinforce the pockets. We do not know exactly where the design came from or who actually invented it, because Levi’s headquarters — and therefore its archives — were destroyed in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
As time passed and more jeans brands appeared, Levi’s registered its trademark in 1943, including the design of its arcuates. From then on, competitors were no longer allowed to copy the motif — something they had not hesitated to do before!
All the brands then developed their own distinctive signs and signatures... in other words, their own arcuate designs. Among the best-known are Wrangler’s “Western Wear” W and Lee Cooper’s Lazy-S.
My embroidered arcuates: an original way to stand out!
Whenever I create an arcuate — or embroidery more generally — I take time to think about the design. Of course, you need to focus on the theme, the size and the colours you want to use.
My motifs are often inspired by Japan, whether that means flowers (cherry blossom, peonies...), kawaii characters, mythological animals (dragons, tigers...) or elements from Shinto culture. I draw a lot of inspiration from reproductions in art books, ukiyo-e prints, the world of tattooing — which has so much to offer in terms of motifs — colouring books and artists. For this new pair of jeans, I took inspiration from the world of Japanese prints and chose a beautiful sparrow.
The size of the design obviously has to suit the piece you are embroidering. A motif can always be reduced or enlarged, but you still need to be able to stitch it and to “read” it — in other words, see and understand it at first glance. It therefore needs to be proportionate to the garment piece, because you probably don’t want someone staring conspicuously at your bottom just to work out what your embroidery represents.
The colours you choose are also extremely important. This is another part of the creative process that I really enjoy: choosing the colour palette! Over the years, I have built up a box full of DMC stranded embroidery threads, which lets me create harmonious palettes and occasionally add new skeins when I want to expand them. That is even easier now that we have the full DMC display available in the Woluwe shop. I chose brown and yellow tones to stay close to the sparrow’s natural colours, and I coordinated the topstitching on the jeans with yellow and brown sewing threads. Always keep the background colour of the piece you are embroidering in mind and choose colours with enough contrast. It would be a shame to spend hours embroidering a motif only for it to be barely visible on the finished garment because there is not enough contrast.
Here are three embroideries I made for previous projects.
Koi carp for my sweetheart
A frog for me
Sakura blossoms
For anyone who would like to try embroidery, learn the basics or improve their skills, we offer both classic and Japanese embroidery classes 😉. You can find our embroidery classes here.
The sewing experience
This is definitely not my first time sewing Sunshine. It is a pattern I have worked with a lot, and I tweak it according to what I feel like making! I sew a size 36 widened at the hips (2 cm around the full hip circumference), using the straight-leg version and widening it towards the hem.
That is exactly what I did for this new version.
I had a fairly “simple” pair of jeans in mind: classic blue denim, a flare cut — which suits my body shape best — and very visible topstitching. Since I chose a flare shape, meaning fitted through the thighs down to the knees and wider towards the bottom of the leg, I altered the leg shape accordingly.
I picked up the blue denim in the shop, along with two reels of bright yellow thread and one brown one. Be careful to choose your thread according to how precise your sewing is: by choosing bright yellow on blue, I knew my topstitching would have to be neat and perfectly aligned. If you are not completely confident, choose a tone-on-tone thread for your first pair of jeans. Then I moved on to the pockets. I always place the right side of the pocket-bag fabric so that it is visible inside the jeans — that way I can see the print when I put the trousers on and take them off 😂
My sparrow-embroidered arcuate
Matching topstitching and a second pocket with machine embroidery (branch motif)
For the back patch pockets, I chose one of my sewing machine’s decorative stitches just for fun, with a branch motif that I thought worked nicely with the sparrow theme.
Once the pockets and the back yoke were in place, I focused on the fly. I really liked the technique suggested by Marie-Emilienne, the designer behind Iam Patterns. The instructions are simple and effective, which makes the construction straightforward.
I topstitched along the fly and the crotch seam, remembering to add bar tacks at the key stress points. Then I assembled the inside leg seams and topstitched those too. Finally, I sewed the outside leg seams and could do a first fitting... very satisfying 😊
Then all that was left was to attach the waistband and belt loops, sew the hems and tada! Time to show them off 😂!
Will there be more versions? Oh yes — yes, yes, and three times yes! They are so comfortable! I’m already dreaming of a colourful version or perhaps an indigo-blue one... I’m still thinking about it. You’ll find plenty of lovely denims in the shop.
So, no more excuses... all that’s left is to get started!
To your needles!
