October 24, 2016: Got One Hand in My Pocket

            Who knew pockets were so complicated?

            OK, obviously tailors, seamstresses, and fashion designers knew. But I didn’t. There really is more to it than just sewing a bag of fabric round a hole in your garment (at least, if you want it to look nice).

            It starts with that little strip of fabric that covers the opening of the pocket. Apparently, that’s called a “welt,” and will be made from some of the patterns pieces I cut out earlier and backed with interfacing. The patterns are basically elongated chevrons that, when folded in half lengthwise, become parallelograms. These are sewn together inside-out, then inverted to hide the seams and pressed flat with an iron. Nice and simple.

             These are then pinned to the outside of the vest panels. You remember how I transferred marks from the patterns to the insides of the vest panels in a previous blogs? The welts are lined up with the bottom of the markings that represent the pocket opening.

            Next came the pockets themselves. Again, I had to transfer markings from the patterns – I used a white colored pencil, since a regular pencil mark wouldn’t show up well on the dark brown fabric (which is the same as the lining). The marked pattern piece was then pinned to the outside of the vest panel, aligned with the welt, and stitched all around where the pocket opening was going to be.

            Once everything was stitched down, I opened the pocket by cutting a slit through both the pocket fabric and the vest panel. The pocket fabric then got stuffed through the hole to end up on the inside of the vest, the welt flipped up to cover the hole and pressed down with the iron.

            To finish off the pockets, I then hand stitched around the edges to close them up and hand stitched the ends of the welts to secure them in place. Also per the pattern, I added two more welts at chest level on the front panels and stitched down the ends – these were made and installed the same as the bottom welts, except without pockets. They’re just there for decoration.

Cost of supplies: $82

Time: 20hrs