Denim Jacket Refashion

I have a cool little project to share with you today! As you may know by know, I’m a frugal gal and thus, I’m a frugal seamstress too (See my tips for frugal sewing). We almost always try to refashion, remake, or reuse clothing before we send it to the giveaway bin.

My daughter has had this jean jacket for many years now and while it still fit everywhere else, the sleeves were way too short (she has very long arms!). It’s a kids’ size jacket from Target, though, and she’s 15, so I guess it makes sense that it no longer fit. She brought it to me with the great idea to remove the sleeves and add some billowy chiffon sleeves instead. I thought it was such a great idea and indeed, it turned out great!

I’m going to show you how I did it :)

I bought one yard of chiffon at Hobby Lobby and I believe it was less than $6 with a coupon. Then I dug through my pattern stash for a sleeve. She wanted it gathered/puffy at the the shoulder and also at the wrist. I decided to use McCall’s 8036. It has pleats at the top instead of gathers, but my daughter loved that idea just as much, so I went with it and didn’t try to draft the pleats into gathers. I do think gathers would be easier because you can adjust them to fit the arm hold on your jean jacket. With pleats, Adjusting pleats to fit is just as doable, but more fussy.

I made the sleeves completely before attaching them to the jacket. Chiffon is not known for being a super easy fabric to sew with, but it’s really not as hard as you might think. Here are a couple tips for sewing chiffon:

• Use a size 70 needle. Mine was a 70 microtex.

• Be gentle with handling it because it does ravel.

• Use a French seam when possible. A serger is an option, of course, but because my chiffon is light in color and can be seen through, I used a French seam because it just looks so nice. To do this, sew the seam wrong sides together at 1/4”. Trim that to 1/8” and then turn it right sides together and press. The sew the seam again right sides together at 3/8”, encasing the raw edges inside. Turn and press and admire how pretty that looks from the outside!

• Lastly, chiffon is hard to press, so I use more pins, or just manipulate it with my fingers as I go, the press it afterward.

I was pretty proud of these sleeves considering the shifty fabric!

The next step is to prepare the jacket. Rather than using the seam ripper to unsew the top stiching and sleeve seams and all that serging, I wanted to use the sleeve cap as the seam allowance. So I cut the sleeve off at 5/8” from the seam.

Now, just pin your new sleeves in as you normally would a set in sleeve and sew it in right in that ditch, matching the seam and adjusting the gathers or pleats to fit. I basted mine first, then stitched after I fixed any accidental tucks.

After my sleeves were in, I serged that seam to prevent raveling. If you don’t have a serger, definitely use a zig zag stitch to finish the seam.

As a last step, I top stitched the whole thing, turning the seam toward the denim. I used navy thread, so this top stitching pretty much disappears, while keeping that bulky serged edge from turning toward the chiffon and showing.

My daughter really loves this a has worn it several times! We love to take dance photos and she wanted to bring the jacket to our last photo shoot.

Just for fun, I tracked down a photo of her wearing this jacket for her 14th birthday photos from a few years ago! They sure do grow fast.

I hope you liked this idea! Do you have other ideas for denim jacket refashions? I’d love to hear them! I have another post on upcyling and refashioning clothes for teens and kids, so be sure and check that out if you need some inspo!

Cheers :)

Nikki