More denim ruminations

Please excuse the bad photos. They were taken with my phone in my cube at work...

I haven’t done anything sewing related in a couple of days. I received the denim for my jeans yesterday. It isn’t quite as stretchy as I expected, but I love the color. The buttons I ordered are even cooler in person than they were on the website, but I have no idea what I will use them for. If only they were less expensive! The blue pinstripe will hopefully end up being a pair of slacks and maybe a skirt.

Today, while I am at work, B is being awesome and prewashing and drying it for me. Tonight I am going to cut out the pieces with a very generous seam allowance, so I can hopefully start construction tomorrow morning. I have been reading and rereading this zipper fly tutorial at Stitches and Seams, trying to figure it out. I think I get it, but I will find out when I actually attempt it.

I want to embroider the back pockets, because that is a detail that I love in RTW. At this point I am leaning towards a minimalist, lines-only, embroidery of a couple of gears. In my head I see it as about 1/4 of a large gear with a smaller gear. I am very much in a steampunk phase right now, which I worry may be pushing me in a bad direction. I really like the idea but I can't seem to put it on paper yet.

All week I have been examining people's jeans. What do I think about the pocket placement on her's? The topstitching on his? It helped me to realize something. I actually like the fading details that they put on commercial jeans now. I’m not especially fond of crotch whiskers, but I do like a bit of fading on the front of the thighs. I’m not entirely sure how to get this look, though. Spray on some bleach? Sponge on the bleach? Hand held sander? I think all three would work, but which is more reliable? It would be annoying to go to all the work, make a great looking pair of jeans, and then make them look as though they had contract some catastrophic denim disease in trying to fade them. What do you think? What would you do?