#adding pockets

I created that smaller pocket from scraps because the actual back pockets were riveted and i couldn't uppop it

the big pocket goes all the way to the seam at the bottom so it can hold lots of stuff :3

My fabric arrived! A little late, but with all that’s going on it’s fair enough I supposed. It’s a meter by 45inches (I think? I will measure to be sure) of ivory poplin cotton. I’ve looked into what poplin means, but it rather went over my head. The pertinent point though, is that it should be fully natural materials, and not melt like plastic if gunpowder cinders get on it.

Before I ordered the fabric, I’d already done the seam ripping in the appropriate place, and the day before the fabric arrived I checked and drafted my pocket pattern and dimensions. It’s a bit smaller than the other pocket, but will hopefully therefore be a more manageable depth. While I love a pocket that reaches to my knee, it’s a bit unhelpful if I want to get something small which sinks to the bottom.

The pattern is drawn, cut, and pinned. I have put it in different positions to find the most efficient on not wasting fabric.

I just can't find the courage to cut.

My Brummie Mummy and general mentor has given constant encouragement and reminded me her first fabric she cut herself was SILK so this is nothing to worry about.

With the strains of Ella Roberts' rendition of Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, here we go!

First snip.

I have learnt within a few centimetres that this is very difficult with a cat on your lap and limited light! It also didn’t take long to wish for fabric scissors, which there may have been some of in the house, but I didn’t want to go looking so just continued on carefully, using the very base of my scissors.

With it cut, I pinned the edged over to neaten them up, and ironed them sort of flat (because with curves and limited experience true flatness is a pipe dream). From there I pinned the two ironed pieces together and took them to the machine.

Sewing the seams was... more difficult than anticipated. How close I had to hold the fabric to get the stitching that near the edges let to a cut finger and crushed thumb from the mechanism trapping my hand on more than one occasion. But, lesson learned, be more careful and mindful of hand placement.

With the pocket shape secured on both sides as you can see above, this left the opening. I deliberately didn’t cut the opening as it would be the most difficult bit to make sure was the right size until the every end. I was right to do this, as some of the curve of the pocket needed to become part of the opening to have enough space for my hand. 

With this information I pinned to flaps outwards to the right length, trimmed off the excess, then pinned in the flaps on the inside to sew up.

Here I was tempted to hand sew, but I fought the urge for the simple way out and went back to the machine, holding the folded and trimmed sections very carefully. One, so I wouldn’t get hurt again, and two, so the machine wouldn’t sew my opening pieces together, making a lovely sewn oval that would be completely useless and not at all a pocket.

And here is the completed pocket next to its partner just before being sewn into my breeches. I am loving and laughing at the contrast of pure ivory white and the gunpowder stained grey. They will match soon enough if I get my way! I may shove some powder in at my first event back just for the hell of it. Give it a good powder scrub to remove all the white.

All that was left was pushing the pocket into the picked open seam and sewing it into place. I was recommended a ladder stitch as method of choice, but I’m not very good at it. My patience and precision is lacking, so the end result wasn’t as invisible as I would have liked, but it would do.

I can always redo it again at a later date if anyone ever actually notices. Not that they ever will, because who would ever study a soldier’s pockets in great detail?

Pick Pocketing (05/03/20)

Am I going to start every post with a pun? You bet your ass I am at least gonna try.

This one is about the pins bit of the name, and my forays into sewing, alteration, and dream of dreams maybe one day clothes making.

So, to start I need to say that my dad got me a lovely coat for Christmas. Black velvety stuff that dirt and water brushes right off, lined with a lovely fluffy woolly fake furry stuff. Can you tell I don't know my fabric names by heart yet?

I didn't wear it for two months, for all of January is was just sitting sadly in a bag waiting for me to move house to join it. And from then I was staring at it trying to figure out its fate. Thinking to myself “How do I make it wearable when it is not waterproof? It has no hood, and most terribly, it has no pockets.”

So I set myself a mission. Before winter was over I would resolve one of those problems. I would make pockets. Which in the middle of February, I finally did.

First, as with many things my brain does on a whim, I planned it. (A contradiction in terms, whims and planning? Just roll with it.) I looked at my other coats and jackets, and measured their pockets. I had already seen videos that suggested a teardrop shape for pocket patterns, but I thought they looked so tacky, and the stitching on the visible side of the coat would look awful. Or at least it would with my current level of skill.

I needed a rectangle. A shape I could relatively neatly sew into place, by just following straight(ish, I’m queer, help me out here, I can’t do ruler-lines) along a seam, sticking out, up, back in and done. With a bit of approximation and analysis later I came to the conclusion that I wanted them about 14cm by 17cm, with a 14cm opening for my hand. That was doable. I plucked up my courage and cut up some old jeggings whose thighs had seen better days (the woe of being thicc, no thigh gap, and no brand that I know of properly reinforces areas of.. friction) of the right size, attempting this magic known as the seam allowance. What I hadn’t accounted for, was the stretch. While cutting the jeans had been stretching, meaning the end result was not the size or shape I had intended - ugh - but I made do. I wasn’t going to cut more fabric and risk wasting more when this was close enough.

I wasn’t able to find the seamripper (though I know there’s one in the house) o used some tiny nail scissors to snip along the coat’s side seams at the height my hands would comfortably sit. I ironed and pinned the jeans segments into place, rearranging and checking a little bit for whether my hands lined up, or rather that the pinned pockets would line up with my hands. After committing to the location and position, I started sewing.

I began with where the pocket would attach to the opening, and about a quarter of the way through made the mistake I had tried so hard not to, by sewing both sides of the opening together. So unpicked a couple centimetres of stitching then went back to it again. I would say “repeat on the other side,” but I didn’t, not for a few hours anyway, because I did the pockets one after the other, rather than simultaneously.

With the opening seam tucked into place I redid my pinning and off I went around the edges of the pocket. Doing my best to make it neat on the outside of the coat, and in nice lines, even if not perfectly angled, parallel, or symmetrical, they were at least subtle.

And here is where the god awful bit of being a newbie hand sewer comes in.

I spent four hours backstitching to try to keep my lines nice and even while strong. I didn’t want to have two lines running next to each other, I couldn’t devote that long even for a nice professional coat. And it was just terrible. My back hated it, my desire to do something else hated it. But I kept going anyway. Because I was going to have pockets dammit.

So after a lengthy montage of my working on one then the other, the pockets were complete and I happily showed them off to the household.

They flowed smoothly with the silhouette of the coat, not even bulging too much when contents were inserted. I was pleased. And very grateful for the coat after marching along a half hour walk to and from the train station multiple days in a row for interviews. In the rain. Have I mentioned the rain yet? Or the cold? So yeah, the coat was and is very appreciated. And as it turned out, the waterproof issue resolved itself since the fabric, unless absolutely sodden, just brushes water off. The bigger problem is it doesn't let my sweat out!

That was then, and this is now. Now my biggest problem, is that the pockets are constantly dropping things. Their slightly-too-small size is largely to blame, but I have noticed that the seam along the bottom of the entry, which should be secured for 3cm, is coming loose. Again, probably because the pockets are slightly too small, and the stitching isn’t tight enough to hold it all in, and something had to give. So today my project is to reinforce the pocket entry point. In an ideal world there would be a zip, in a slightly less utopian but ultimately better world there would be a button, but as it is, just a slightly stronger, and maybe higher up closure in the entry point will have to do.