Pocket!

It was a rainy day so I decided to sew a pocket into a skirt I have been wearing a lot this summer. I hardly want to buy anything anymore WITHOUT pockets, but I still have plenty of clothes that I purchased pre-Pocket Awakening, and every time I wear them I wonder if there isn’t a way to just stitch a fold in there for my lip balm at least.

This skirt's getting an upgrade!

My first idea was to steal the pocket pattern from a pants patterned I already owned, but when I got out the pattern, I realized it was for cargo pants from the 90s and the pocket for those pants might be a bit much (seen below, on left). Instead I found a dress with a pocket that works well and traced its pocket onto a scrap of tracing paper I found on top of the sewing room garbage (seen below, center). Then I sat back in awe of the size difference and lamented that smart phones and cargo pants weren’t in vogue simultaneously.

The fabric I used for my pocket fell off of the fabric shelf when I was pawing through the patterns. It is a piece of leftover muslin that happened to be the PERFECT size for one pocket. (My fabric shelves are a disaster right now and I often walk in to find fabrics in a heap on the floor. I think the cat tries to sit in there sometimes. But I wanted to be honest with you about how I make decisions while sewing, and more often than not it’s based on ready accessibility and chance.)

I ironed the muslin, pinned the pattern onto it, and then cut it out.

Next, I had to rip out the seam on the edge of the skirt where I wanted to place my pocket. I only ripped out a section just long enough for the pocket because, while it is easier to put in a pocket with completely detached front and back pieces of skirt, I didn’t want to take out the elastic and all that because I don’t like seam ripping THAT much. It had both a straight stitch and a serger stitch, so it took a little bit of work to get all the stitches out, but fortunately I am very experienced in seam ripper usage from many errant seams over the years. Running the seam ripper through the serged stitches worked pretty well.

Then I pinned the pocket to the skirt, right sides together. (That’s a lie. I first pinned the pocket wrong sides together, sewed it, and then had to seam rip it all out when I realized I’d done it wrong.) I placed one pocket piece on the front of the skirt, and one on the back. I used a 3/8” seam allowance and sewed the two pieces into place.

The next step was to attached the two sides of the pocket together. I turned the skirt inside out, aligned the two halves of the pocket, and pinned. I stitched around the outside of the pocket, also using a 3/8” seam allowance. (The bottom and the top where the stitches meet up with the side seam on the skirt are always a mystery to me when installing pockets, so I did my best and cleaned up the gaps later.)

Finally, it’s the moment of truth! I turned the skirt right side out and tried it on. I was happy to find out that I had put my pocket on the right side even though I had forgotten to check when I started. I look forward to wearing this skirt again soon where I can keep my phone and lip balm close at hand throughout the day!

Fabric Pen Roll Tutorial

Some time ago, I picked up a free project sheet at JoAnn for a fabric crayon roll. It looked quick and easy, and I thought a crayon holder might make a nice gift for a toddler. Recently, for the 8 millionth time when I couldn't find most of my favorite 5-color pen set, I decided to modify this pattern to keep my favorite pens handy and together.

Of course then it took me a half hour to find the pattern sheet...

And then it took me another 15 minutes to find the fabrics...

And I still have yet to find all 5 pens!

For this project, I needed:

• Two 7" x 16" rectangles of fabric for the pen pockets
• Two 9" x 16" rectangles of fabric for the outside/back
• One 9" x 16" rectangle of fleece for adding stiffness to the roll (not visible from outside)
• Two pieces of ribbon, each ~26" long

These 4 fabrics are from fat quarters I'd purchased for a different project, but they were fun and happy and I had extra. I had on hand 3 colors of thread that would have worked, but I thought the goldenrod looked best with all 4 fabrics.

I used 4 colors because I couldn't choose just 2. The stripes will be the outside, the pink the inside, and the blue and yellow will make up the pen pocket.




The scrap piece of giraffe print fleece I used for the inside of my fabric roll is a little skinnier than desired, but I wasn't bothered about that and fudged the stitching later.

STEP 1
With right sides together, sew the long sides of the pocket pieces together with a 1/4" seam, leaving the short sides open.

STEP 2
Turn right sides out and press flat. I pressed the seam several inches down from the top so that some of the blue would show over the yellow.

STEP 3
With right sides out, top stitch 1/4" down from the top. (I forgot to take a picture of this step.)

STEP 4
Assemble all the pieces into a stack in this order:

1. Fleece (giraffes)
2. Inside 9"x16" piece, right side up (pink)
3. Sewn 7"x16" pieces for pocket (blue/yellow), aligned with bottom of inside piece
4. Ribbons, folded in half, with folds lined up against the edge (pretty side, if there is one, should NOT be showing here, that was my bad)
5. Outside 9"x16" piece, wrong side up (stripes) [Not shown]

Pin these pieces together so they do not shift while sewing.


 

STEP 5
Stitch around the outside of assembled fabrics with a 3/8" seam, leaving about a 2" opening for turning them inside out. I got distracted fudging my seam because of the too-small fleece and had to use a seam ripper to open up the 2" space again. It's not a real sewing experience without use of the seam ripper anyway.


STEP 6
Turn right side out and press flat.








STEP 7
Topstitch 1/4" from edge around the perimeter of the roll. This effectively seals off the 2" opening that was left for turning.


STEP 8
Using chalk or pins, mark the dividing stitching lines for the pens on the pocket. I made my slots 1 1/4" wide and have 12 openings.









STEP 9
Stitch along the chalk lines on your pocket, taking care to back stitch at both ends in order to prevent the seams from unraveling. For my first two lines I started at the blue and stitched down, but that led to the puckers you see in the bottom left corner, so I switched to starting from the yellow edge and this looked much better.

Ta-da! All finished! As I mentioned, the pretty side of my ribbons doesn't show on the back side of the tied roll, which was a mistake. Unfortunately, to fix it I would have to go back to Step 5, and that was more seam ripping than I deemed it was worth. The design still shows when the bows are tied, so I am satisfied.

For a less froufrou look, two small loops of elastic instead of ribbon would function nicely.

(To make the original crayon roll pictured above, use 18"x11" and 18"x7" rectangles, and sew the pocket into the middle of the backing fabric, creating openings on both the top and bottom for crayons.)