Denim Jacket Alteration

I'd been wanting to add a patch to the back of this jacket for a while. The inspiration came to me after going through my dad's fondly dubbed 't-shirt museum', which is essentially a couple of bin bags full of retired t-shirts that he kept in the loft out of sentimentality.

There were two tops with painted designs on them - my brother had fond memories of my dad wearing them. However, the collars were gone on both of them. One of the collars looked pretty fixable, so I folded over the ruined edges to freshen it up, and gave it to my brother.

The other t-shirt's collar was worse for wear, so I just cut it off, along with a few holes around it. The t-shirt was absolutely massive on me - I'm a lot shorter and have narrower shoulders.
This was where inspiration hit. I cut the bottom of the t-shirt off at the most natural splitting point in the art, providing me with a cool cropped t-shirt and material for patching my denim jacket.

Initially I'd just planned to add the patch and nothing else to the jacket. But after I'd sewn it on (by hand), I realised the stitching looked way too neat - how would anyone know I'd made it myself? So, I painted deliberately messy patterns across the rest of the jacket (matching the patch design), hopefully removing any doubt from passers-by that this jacket was home-altered.

Photo Gallery

(Photos not included above).