The short story is I made a jacket using coffee bean sacks ie hessian, using New Look 6532 in size 10.

Earlier this year I bought some coffee bean sacks to reuse into bags, clothes or hats. We’d visited the Australian War Memorial Museum earlier this year and I took quite a few photos of ways people had mended their clothes or reused existing materials into garments. The wedding dress in the photo above, taken at the Australian War Memorial Museum is made from parachute fabric – silk.

Using what you have is the theme for Sewover50’s #So50SustainableSewing challenge.

These were my first pieces I made using the coffee been bag fabric. These 2 bags were sewn with fabrics and zippers from my stash.

These photos show how loose the weave is and the damage on one of the bags. I did some reweaving with threads from the hessian to complete the fabric for the larger bag. On the smaller bag, the colour print faded when I machine washed the bags, so I used a Sharpie and coloured in the print.

Here’s a front view of the jacket both open, closed and close up. The front and back bodices of this jacket uses a finer coffee bean bag hessian. Carol of @anncie2001 gave me some encouragement on Instagram a few weekends ago. Carol is a great advocate for enabling sewists to build their skills on her facebook group and Youtube tutorials.

The back bodice has a pleat so I used the green selvedge as the back hem. When I showed Carol this side of the bag, it had an ugly stamp of a bug. Carol suggested using the bug print in pieces for a pocket. I’ve placed part of the bug under the left sleeve.

These are my #sewnshownseated photos. On one sleeve is the ‘product of Honduras’ statement. The other sleeve has ‘blend fully washed’ and ‘2019/2020’ on it.

We’re in lockdown so I’ve used everything from my stash. Every seam allowance is bias bound with a coffee print I bought but really shouldn’t have bought. I’ve used a stretch woven black suiting fabric for the facings and pocket bag. I bought the suiting for a suit, and I have plenty to still make the garment on my to do list. The hessian is lined with a medium weight woven cotton – probably an end of roll piece from Ikea. All the zippers were bought at the Remnant Warehouse, years ago when I used to go there to sew. The interfacing came from a local manufacturer’s refuse fabrics gifted to me from a friend.

The pocket bag was traced off a rtw jacket I use a lot walking in the Winter mornings during lockdown.

I may not have toiled the pattern but I did use the fabrics earlier this year to know what challenges sewing hessian were. On this jacket, I’ve sewing it using all the construction rules you can think of – pressing every seam, binding every seam edge and top stitching on the collar, zipper openings hems.

Print placement was really important so this looks cohesive. I cut out the cotton interlining pieces first and used those to figure out the print placement. I had coffee breaks as I did this so I could mull over the final look of this jacket.

The pocket were planned and designed to fit my phone, mask, tissues and a shopping bag or two. Once the dry cleaners are open again, I’ll have this jacket steam pressed so that it looks shaper.

The jeans I’m wearing are RTW and I’ve had these for over 8 years. The top is one I made ages ago that I rewear every Winter.