When is denim not really denim?

Life certainly has taken its toll on blogging. It's very hard to believe I haven't blogged about anything since February. Life in general has been very busy, in March I had a huge hat order, April brought some prom dress alterations, a couple of sports name tags, and sporadic work on my niece's baby quilt that was supposed to be done months ago (still not done!).

If you have read my two blog posts this year (oh what a paltry number of posts!), you know that I made a pair of Jalie jeans and loved, loved, loved them. A second pair was whipped up from the same denim with embroidered pockets and an improved waistband/yoke fit. On the second pair I lowered the crotch curve another half inch but removed it after making the second pair. I don't think it made much difference. The jeans are so close to perfect for my figure so I'm just doing some minor backside tweaking. Instead for my third pair, I decided to do a 1/2" fisheye dart just under the crotchline. It's exciting to see what this is going to do for my 3rd pair of jeans.

Which brings me to my next point. When is denim not really denim? I bought some periwinkle stretch denim (96/4) from Lura's Fabric Shop and was quite disappointed when my package arrived. I know part of it is a customer issue on my part. My monitor shows more of a royal blue-ish color. Requesting either a Pantone color chart number or ordering a swatch would have solved my issue. That wasn't my only beef though.

Here is the side-by-side "denim" color comparison (fabric.com denim on the left, Lura's denim on the right). Not exactly the "periwinkle" color that comes up on my monitor from the Lura's website either. I was hoping for a darker blue so in that respect, it was disappointing.



The fabric is advertised as, "Lady Wrangler's bull denim with stretch in a beautiful periwinkle color". Okay. So I don't buy Wrangler jeans. But I do buy jeans, and I'm quite familiar with denim fabric. Are Wrangler jeans made from a different type of denim that I usually use? It looked more like a denim twill. Is this typical of bull denim? Here are comparison pics to show you the fabric and color difference between my fabric.com 96/4 stretch denim purchased a couple of years ago and the Lura's 96/4 stretch denim purchased a few months ago.

Here's the denim from Lura's. When I think denim for jeans, this is not exactly what I think of as jeans denim. Someone correct me please. Is this a denim twill?

When I think of denim for jeans, it is supposed to look like the pic below. This was great stretch denim purchased from fabric.com a while back during a sale:

All is not lost, however. The color and fabric type certainly are not my favorite, but I'll get a good pair of around-the-house jeans. Maybe once they're made I'll actually like them. The important thing for me was to get the same 96/4 stretch for fitting purposes. That I did get.

So that is what is now occupying my time from a sewing standpoint--my 3rd pair of Jalie jeans. On the table. Ready for me to insert the fly-front zipper.

Happy Sewing!