Hand Embroidering an Art Jacket for the First Time

I’ve never really embroidered anything, but Tiktok keeps showing me embroidery and cross stitch content. I’m already into crochet and knitting so embroidery should be relatively easy. Right?

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My inspiration for this embroidered jacket is biker vests and battle jackets. I love the maximalism in them. The way these people have collected patches and pins from here and there and combined them into something so personal and unique. No two jackets will ever be the same.

I found this jacket at the thrift store for $8. It’s some cheap shopping network brand and nothing special. It’s a 4x and I took the waist some to give it a little more shape. It’s comfortable to wear over my hoodie for the winter and should hopefully replace my hoodie for the summer. We’ll see, it’s a bit of an “emotional support hoodie” situation.

I chose to start with a big rainbow sequin peace sign on the back as homage to my high school hippie self. But also my current very queer self. I got these sequins at the dollar tree years ago and they’ve just been waiting for something like this. To get the circle perfect I traced the biggest pan lid in my kitchen. The sequins are sewn individually but magically the colors and spacing ended up perfect so the circle is seamless.

These first embroideries aren’t in any sort of order of creation, but next on the showcase is “Smile” featuring the millennial S. This is how I doodled it in school with the perfect lettering. I don’t know if I used a heart at the top of the “I” or not.” I did dot the I in my name with a circle, so I may have done that. I did this one in a multicolor thread because it made me think of gel pens.

Make sure you put your political statements on the front for safety. Obviously gotta have my pronouns, “She/Her.” I used the colors of the Pansexual flag.

Then over my heart we’ve got “Protect Trans Kids” in the trans flag colors. If I’d known growing up, what I do now about gender and sexuality I would be a much happier, less traumatized person. Everyone deserves the love and respect and support to figure themselves out.

Next up is the Ukrainian flag. My brother in the military spent a lot of time in Ukraine and even dated a Ukrainian woman for a while. After Russia invaded he was there helping, moving bodies out of blown up buildings. The girl he had dated was killed in some of the first bombings.

I work for a library system so of course I have to have “Read banned books.” I figured this was one of my less controversial takes so I put it on the sleeve. I’m thinking about adding the titles of banned books underneath it. Like “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood, “1984” by George Orwell, “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury, and “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank. If you’ve got suggestions let me know.

I’ve also been adding multicolor thread around the seams to make them stand out. It’s turning out really cool. I saw someone do this on Tiktok with a lightwash denim jacket and pastel thread. It was just beautiful.

It was after writing out all of “read banned books” that I decided I really only want to use backstitch. I can’t handle this splitting thread nonsense. I also decided to just do everything with the full six strands. Nothing is so delicate as to need to separate them.

I’ve got a lot of plans for the future. Lots of space on this jacket. The worst part is drawing out my plans. It’s a dark jacket and I’m embroidering in the dark. I’m also not super good at freehand drawing. I’m barely good at tracing. I’m really considering some stick and stitch stabilizer. It’s a paper sticker that you can buy with the picture already on it, stitch over it, and then wash the sticker away leaving just your stitches. It really seems to be the easiest way to do this. But you can also get plain paper that you could print or draw your own ideas on.