Linktastic Tuesday, All-Pockets Edition

The pattern above (click on the image to visit the eBay auction) is not only a great, easy dress, but it also inspired me to post some pocket links, or quasi-pocket links. (The one above is a B32, but there's also two B38s on eBay right now, too.)

Michelle (of Green Kitchen) sends this great link to Bitter Betty's site, where she posts a pocket tutorial.

This (sent by Mary Beth) isn't actually a pocket, but I think they're missing a significant use case by not including a stealth pocket in it. Considering how many women do keep things in their bras, why wouldn't you add a pocket to a bra accessory? Seems like a no-brainer to me. (Of course, I don't think I'd ever buy one of those things, as they seem uncomfortable and liable to wiggle around, but hey, I admire their problem-solving gumption.)

Also in the thing-that-should-have-pockets-but-doesn't category, Pretty Bourgeois posted a link to a dress that looks like the LL Bean Tote Bag. Too bad there's only one monogram option.

I missed the original auction for this one, sent by Ginger Lane:




But if you click the image there's a B34, sans envelope, up on the 'bay right now. I'd rather not have the envelope -- for some reason, the pictures on that pattern creep me out.

And one more pocket link, from Summerset. Seriously, this link, which explains how to put a pocket and an invisible zipper in the same seam, changed my life. Do you know how many 1950s side-zipper dresses I can put pockets in now? EVERY ONE OF THEM.

I'll Fly Away

Check out this great pattern (at Cemetarian). Dawn sent it to me thinking I would enjoy the winglike pockets -- and she thought right. Wow. Those are some pockets. They're ideally suited to that awkward moment when you have three children awaiting ice cream cones, but only two hands! You could put a double-scoop strawberry in a sugar cone on the right and a rainbow sherbet on the left, and still have a hand free for napkins.

I do really love this pattern, though, and if only I had a triangular cell phone I would snap it up in a second. Look at that collar! And the pockets that are lined with contrast fabric!

If you want it, click on the image to visit Cemetarian's site. It's only $8 ...

Stripes and Pockets Forever

Frequent link-sender to the blog Robin is making a little room in her closet by listing some dresses on eBay, including this wonderful 1940s stripey dress. Robin thinks it may have been a candy-striper's uniform ... but it could certainly have a new life at work or play, no sponge baths required. Think of it with little navy wedge shoes ... It's B36/W26.5.

I love these 1940s striped outfits -- they're so precise! And that center-front zipper is just perfect. This is a no-nonsense, get-it-done dress, but it can still have fun.

I think Robin has the right idea, too. If you're not wearing something, you should set it loose into the world to be free and be loved by someone who will wear it. (Which reminds me, I should REALLY do a purge of my own over the next month or so. Especially of shoes!)

Rainbow Warrior

Robin sent me this eBay listing this morning (click on the image to visit the auction page) and ... well, I don't even have to tell you, do I? You could go out loaded for BEAR in this dress. Cell phone, iPod, paper and pencil, wallet, business cards, breath mints, five lipsticks ... and that's just the red pocket in the front!

And, yes, I realize it's a bit extreme, but sometimes you need to be extreme to make a point. Or to carry all your stuff. And is it any more extreme than this?




I could fit my SON in that bag. And he's EIGHT. (And he doesn't go anywhere without his Nintendo DS, so the bag would also play tinny Japanese videogame music.) In fact, I almost expect a bunch of clowns to start extricating themselves from that handbag. (The last one out toots a little horn, and looks suspiciously like Tom Cruise.) Also, that bag costs more than many people's houses, while the dress is at only $26 right now!

Now, I know I carry too much stuff around with me (the four issues of New Scientist is not negotiable, though maybe I could clean out some receipts and lollipops) but the alternative is being bored out of my mind when the inevitable delays occur. Maybe I should take up meditation?

It's not a shirtdress, but ...

I had to have it. You understand why, don't you?

First off -- those little button flaps! Adorable! I really, really hope they actually button, but if they don't, well, I have ways of MAKING them button.

I've made variations of this pattern every summer for years -- short kimono-sleeved bodice and big full skirt. They're cool and breezy to wear and make up great in lightweight cottons -- even quilting cottons, which often don't hang right in a narrower skirt.

And the six-gore skirt is just ideal for adding pockets; it's so easy. (Figure out where you want the pocket to hit on the side gore. Trace the side gore pattern from that spot down to where you want the pocket to stop. Add seam allowances to the top and the bottom of traced pocket piece. You can either line/face the pocket or finish the top with bias binding. Finish the top of the pocket -- may I suggest piping? -- and turn under the bottom seam allowance. Top-stitch turned-under bottom of pocket to gore. If you don't like the top-stitched look, sew pocket to gore across bottom, right sides together, and press the pocket up. Sides of pocket will be secured when you sew the side seams. See? Easy!)

Whew. Sorry for that pocket-making digression. Anyway, I can't wait to get this pattern (from Best Vintage Patterns) and go to town.

And -- as for what the women in the picture are saying -- I think Yellow Dress just said something like "Check out that guy's butt!" and Black Dress is about to inform Yellow Dress that "That Guy" is in fact the boyfriend of Black Dress. But that's just my take. What's yours?

Spoiled for Choice

I'm so sorry I didn't post yesterday -- there were some internet-connectivity issues, and then there were some "I have to give a talk downtown" issues (compounded by the snow issues), and then there were the "back from a long weekend" issues. I guess I "have issues." (Except for issues of the magazine, which are the only issues I want to have. THOSE are still at the printer!)

Of course, any day on which I don't post is NOT a day in which I have NOTHING to post -- I usually have the OPPOSITE problem, as in, I could post so much every day that I would do nothing else. For instance, just in the last 36 hours or so, I was sent links to:

-- this incredibly cute squirrel-print sundress (sent by Julie)
-- a reminder that PurlSoho has new Liberty cottons in stock (from Rebecca)
-- a link to a wedding-perfect satin dress WITH POCKET (from Kai, and let's just see a picture of that pocket, okay?)




-- some paper art dresses (sent by Theresa)
-- an Anne Fogarty polka-dot midriff-emphasizing dress on eBay (sent by Robin, and let's just peek at that one, too, shall we?)





And there were several more links that I will save for another day. Aren't I the luckiest blogger in Blogdom? Thank you (and keep 'em comin')!

So easy. Sigh.

Doesn't this pattern (from Linda's Sew Be It) look just SO EASY? I mean, it's probably not something you can make in an hour, but then, the cuter stuff never is. (It takes time to grind the cute into the fabric, you know. Laboriously. By hand.) But it looks so easy TO WEAR.

I love those patterns that want ONE HUGE BUTTON, because my One-Huge-Button collection is vast; it contains many, many One Huge Buttons picked up hither and yon. (I used to, in my less discriminating/more magpie-ish days, buy completely ratty, holey, unwearable vintage, just to cut the two remaining buttons off of it. Then I would lose one of the buttons. This is how One Huge Button collections are born.)

I'd make this out of a ditsy floral, I think, green and yellow, with a big green button and green piping around the pockets. Or a red and black geometric with a red button and piping. I might even pipe the yoke. Except I'm not buying this one, because it's slightly too small for me (Size 14, B34, I think). So one of y'all do it, okay, and then send me a picture of the dress you make?

I have to say that I've made quite a few of these Anne Adams newspaper patterns, and they're usually very good -- clear directions, go together well. As soon as I get a new battery charger for my camera (I can't find the one it came with, which leads me to believe I left it in some hotel room, somewhere, grrrr) I'll take a picture of a couple Anne Adams dresses I've made that I really liked. If I remember. Nag me, okay?

Renee says "Don't Diss My Pockets!"

Anna sends me a link to this site where the OBVIOUSLY RHETORICAL question of "pockets: hot or not?" is being asked.

The blogger (who, I think, is also named Erin, in some bizzarro-world faceoff of Pockets!Erin vs. No-Pockets!Erin) says:

But they [pockets] defy the very purpose of dresses, that is, to make you feel pretty and girly. Jamming your hands deep in the pockets of a dress does nothing for your shape (think hunched shoulders, stumpy arms and two big wads of fabric adding unnecessary bulk to your hips).

Needless to say, I disagree. I think what defies the very purpose of dresses (which is to make you feel happy & most like yourself) is having to haul along a giant shoulder bag: think lopsided leaning, aching arms, and a huge goiter of a bag adding unnecessary bulk to your everywhere.

I also don't think women should have to decide between having a place to put a lipbalm, some ID, and their keys and looking as slim as possible. Jeez, there are worse things in life than bulk on the hips, especially when it's apparent to anyone with the sense God gave a junebug that it's Something In Your Pocket, and not that you were Happy to See a Twinkie. (And, might I add, so what if you were, at one point, happy to see a Twinkie? I am getting so very tired of machinations of the Diet-Industrial Complex ...)

I'd say "go leave a comment" but the site is all whirligiggy with popup boxes and too many flashing things and whatnot, so don't bother. You can comment here, I don't mind.

[Thanks to Dara for sending the picture!]

Pockets = Freedom

(Above illustration from The Workwoman's Guide [and it's a downloadable PDF, thank you Google Book Search!])

Are you unsurprised, as I was, to learn that the V&A website has a whole section on pockets? It's a good one, too (also unsurprising) and traces the initial demise of the pocket and rise of the handbag to the radical change in women's fashion of the 1790s, when dresses became too narrow to admit of the wearing of separate pockets tied around the waist under the dress. Because of this, women began to carry little bags, called reticules, which accommodated much less than the capacious separate pockets.

Last night I walked about fifty blocks (intentionally, and with a glad heart). The weather was beautiful -- it was a warm soft wet night (okay, I admit it, I like walking in a light rain), and I wasn't carrying a bag.

I had ditched my purse-cum-laptop-bag as it was just too big to dangle off me all night while I stood around clutching my club soda at a party (and I didn't bring a smaller bag with me on this trip). Besides, between the pocket in my skirt and the pockets of my coat, I could carry the essentials (ID, money, lipstick, treo, ipod).

Without a bag, I barely noticed those fifty blocks. It was amazing how freeing it was, to not have a bag to deal with, to shift, to move around to the front of your body and then to the back, to switch from arm to arm. Your arms swing unencumbered; you walk differently, faster. You can shove both hands in your pockets; you can put your hands on your hips while waiting impatiently for a light to change. I also noticed that some people gave me funny looks; whether it was "There's a woman without a bag!" or "Why the hell is she wearing a circle skirt in a grass-green camouflage print?" I couldn't tell.

On my way uptown, as an experiment, I counted women without bags. I saw one. I think she was eight years old, but she could have been nine. (Since this was about 11:45 p.m., I don't think this was a representative sample, and it's not like I stood around the busier intersections making sure I checked everyone, but hey.)

Now, I love bags, I obsess about bags (mostly about whether they have the right size and number of pockets ...) and I carry a bag most of the time. But when you have enough pockets, or the right kind of pockets, you can escape the bag and just enjoy the freedom to stride along unencumbered. You should try it ...

HOW TO: make a three-panel skirt have pockets

Okay, I've been putting off doing a HOWTO here because, frankly, I'm not really a great seamstress. I've never taken a formal class, and every time I read an issue of Threads I say to myself "Huh! That *would* be a better way to do that." But I figured I'd post this one, for a couple reasons. First of all, even though I'm not that great at it (nothing like Summerset, for one, or Rostitchery, for another!) I really do enjoy sewing, and so at least I can reassure people than even if you aren't couture-caliber you can make stuff that fits and have fun doing it. Secondly, I figured if I post this people will tell me what I did wrong, and that way next time I can do it faster/better/more attractively. And finally, I just HATE PATTERNS THAT DON'T HAVE POCKETS. So by posting this I can rescue one more pattern from the evils of pocketlessness.

Anyway. There it is.

So, what will you need to do this project?

• a sewing machine


• an iron and ironing board


• flat space to work


• scissors, tape measure, ruler, pencil or marking implement, etc. etc.


• Diet Coke or similar beverage


• music with a good beat but off-kilter or oddly nihilistic lyrics (I like Soul Coughing, They Might Be Giants, Magnetic Fields, etc.)


• fabric (about two yards of 45" wide for the pattern shown here, 1 3/4 yards if it's 60" wide)
  


• a suitable pattern (see below)

(Okay, okay, OKAY. I know that pattern has gauchos. Ignore them. Pretend they aren't there. It's okay, we won't even be TOUCHING those pieces. Don't worry. Would I lead you into gauchos? I would not. You can trust me.)

Now, pretty much any skirt pattern with a center panel and two side panels will work for this project. I chose this Simplicity pattern because 1) I like contour waistbands and 2) it was $1 at JoAnn's on Saturday, so I could buy two. Why two? Because I'm lazy, and part of this project involves doubling a pattern piece. This way I could just use another part from the second pattern, and not have to trace it. $1 is cheap for not having to trace!

For this project I decided to use view B of this pattern, which is the blue skirt in the illustration. A, B, and C are basically the same, just differing lengths. The first thing I had to figure out is what size to make, so I could pull those pattern pieces and put them aside.

Now, I have a small waist in proportion to my hips (or a big butt in proportion to my waist, calling Sir Mix-A-Lot) so I checked those measurements, and sure enough, the size that was right in the hips would be too big in the waist. (Also, this pattern is made to be worn 1" below the waist, which I Don't Do.)

Now, I've made a lot of Simplicity skirts lately, including another one with a yoke, and so I grabbed the yoke pattern I knew fit me and laid it over the yoke pattern for this skirt. That confirmed for me that I needed a size 12 waistband but a size 14 skirt. What to do?




Well, I took the pieces for the size 12 waistband and cut them on the 12 line at the top edge, but at the 14 at the bottom edge, fudging between them at the sides, so that it would fit at the waist but still be able to be attached to the size 14 skirt. Then I cut out the rest of the pattern pieces from the pattern sheets, making sure to have *two* side front pieces, one from one pattern and one from the other.

That done, the next thing I had to do was to get rid of the pleats in that side front piece, cute as they are, because I thought they would interfere with putting in pockets. Now, I looked to hell and gone all over the Internet for the "right" way to do this, but I couldn't find any instructions, so this is just my usual half-assery: I took the pattern pieces and taped the pleats shut, tapering all the way down to the edge.

But this made me worry that taking that pleat out would make the hips too narrow, so I decided to measure the hips just to make sure. To do this, I put the pattern pieces together, overlapping the seam allowances, and marked where my hip is (about 9" below my waist, you can see a black mark on the center front piece where I measured this). Then I measured across to make sure there would be enough room for my hips (whew! there was).




That done, it was time to figure out where to place the pocket on the side front piece. I held up the pattern to myself, making sure to place the top of it lower than the waist (because the pattern has a waistband). Then I let my hand fall to where I would want a pocket, and marked that.

Then I cut three of the side front piece, out of a scrap I had lying around:



Why three? Because the pocket in the panel has three parts. There's the part of the skirt above the pocket opening (which also includes the 'back' of the pocket), the part of the skirt below the pocket opening, and the part, not visible, that is the 'inside' of the pocket (which is like a facing on the part of the skirt below the pocket opening).

So I took these three pieces and laid them out. Unfortunately, none of these pictures turned out, and OF COURSE it's the most difficult part of making this. Ugh.

Anyway here are the three pattern pieces you end up with (the skirt, the top and underpocket, and the pocket facing). I cut the facing out of a piece of pattern tissue that I had lying around (literally, it was on the floor). You can use any kind of paper. Do write which is which on the facing piece, though, it saves a lot of heartache later. I don't know how many pocket facings I've made and then thrown away by accident!




So how did I get from three of the same piece to three different pieces? Well, you're cutting the bottom off the bottommost piece of the pocket sandwich (everything below the bottom of the inside pocket seam). You're cutting the top off the topmost piece of the pocket sandwich (everything above the top edge of the pattern -- but DON'T FORGET to leave a seam allowance, or your pocket will be 5/8ths of a inch lower on your body than you expected). Then you cut the same top and bottom off the pocket facing (the middle part of the pocket sandwich) to make the pocket facing.



The darker blue is the bottommost layer, towards the top of the skirt. You can see how deep the pocket will be (the pin) and the black line shows the added seam allowance for the bottom pocket seam (yes I draw on fabric with china markers).

Here's me making sure the pocket is exactly where I want it (the floral thing there is my keychain clipped to the pocket of the skirt I'm actually wearing, as opposed to the one I'm making):



(This is from my point-of-view, e.g., leaning over and upside-down.)

I was happy with this, so then I figured I could make a "real" (that is, wearable) skirt! Yay! But I still didn't want to use great fabric, so I used a piece of lightweight denim I had hanging around. Here's the three back pieces all sewn together:



(I left the pleats in at the back.)

But the plain denim fabric seemed a little boring to me. How could I spice it up? I know! Zippers! Yellow zippers!



You see, when you make this kind of pocket, the top edge can be all wiggly and pulled out of shape, unless you reinforce it with twill tape. Zippers have built-in twill tape, and they make a nice design element.

So get a plastic separating zipper (like the kind that you use to make jackets with). Cut away the teeth of the zipper that would go in the seam allowance (about 1/2 inch on either side, as in the photo above) -- you do NOT want the sewing machine needle to hit a zipper tooth!

Of course, the picture of sewing the zipper trim on to the skirt piece didn't come out, either, but what I did was: sew the zipper to the skirt piece, teeth facing down towards the hem. Sew the pocket facing to the skirt piece, right sides together. Then turn and topstitch, like so:



When you're done, it will look like this:



Then, to assemble, you want to attach the underpocket to the pocket facing piece, like so:



I seamed the bottom (this picture is fuzzy) and then double-zigzagged the edges, because this fabric is a bit ravelly.



Then you baste the whole sandwich together. (When you're sewing over the zipper part, even though you trimmed away the teeth in the seam allowance, you probably want to hand-crank the machine. Hitting zipper teeth at speed is Not Fun.)



This is what it looks like when you're done:



See how the stitching down the side is within the seam allowance? I used to baste at the seamline and then had to pick out the bits that showed. I'm marginally smarter now.

Then you do it all again for the other side. Here's the front assembled:



NOTE: Do not let your iron run over the plastic zipper teeth. They WILL melt!

Then you keep going and assemble the rest of the skirt. Here's the waistband going on -- why did I sew a line of stitching around the bottom of the waistband facing?



This is why -- it makes a nice guideline for turning it under!



Now, time to baste in the zipper. If I'd been thinking, I would have bought a bright yellow zipper for the side zip, too, but I wasn't thinking (and in fact the other zippers were bought more than a year ago for another project), so blue it is.



And actually, my first try at sewing in the zipper was completely crappy, but I offer it here to you to show you how bad a sewer I can be:



So I took it out and redid it (and I re-threaded the machine in blue, because no sense in drawing attention to the zipper!). But this is getting really long, so here's where we skip to the end:



The pockets aren't really uneven: I'm just standing funny. And the skirt is a bit too long; I think I'll shorten it by about two inches next time I make this. It's a bit dowdy at this length.

The whole process (not counting the time it took me to find & buy the pattern) was about three and a half hours. Two hours to do the measuring, planning, preliminary cutting, and prototyping, and one and a half hours to make up the whole skirt (including cutting out the new fabric and re-doing the side zipper). The skirt is hemmed with yellow bias tape, applied by machine.

I didn't prewash the plastic zipper I used for the pocket trim, because it is made of pure polyester. If I were going to use a vintage zipper (or an upholstery zipper) with metal teeth and a cotton tape, I definitely would have prewashed the zipper. If you had long enough zippers (or were okay with lapping them) you could have also inserted zippers into the long front seams between the panels. You could also use piping, braid, or rickrack to trim the pocket edges.

Okay, that's ONE WAY to make front pockets on a panel skirt. If you have a different way, do leave it in the comments! If I left out an important step (as I am wont to do), ask for clarification in the comments! (The plant to my right in the picture (your left) is lavender, so you don't have to ask about it in the comments, and my tights are from H&M, last year. Everything else, ask about it in the comments!)