Sewing the Pockets
Shaerie Mead
Lessons
Introduction & Overview of Skillset
01:07 2Pattern Envelope Overview
07:18 3Measuring Your Body
01:59 4Cutting out the Pattern
04:09 5Understanding Fabric Anatomy
02:29 6Cutting out the Fabric
16:39 7Fusing the Interfacing
02:40 8Sewing the Pockets
12:03Lesson Info
Sewing the Pockets
All right so we're going to get started with our sewing and we're going to start with our pocket pieces so if you have pockets that have the same fabric on the inside and the outside just picked two of them because they're all identical and if you have pockets that have a different fabric is the lining you want to pick one outer pocket and one lining pocket the fabric that you want to be the outside pocket I'm gonna have you turned so the wrong side of the fabric is facing up it you there's a pivot here it's a pretty sharp turn and we're going to mark this pivot point so it's nice and perfect when we're finished sewing our pockets to do this correctly you'll need shock that has a nice sharp point to it and I'm gonna use my ruler to go five eighths of an inch in from the edge of this pocket and make a lion across my ruler again I want to hold on nice and tight to the ruler and go lightly back and forth with my pencil and then I'm going to intersect it doing the same thing in the other d...
irection so five eighths of an inch on your ruler five little squares and I'm going to make an x so I can very clearly see where I'm going to put my needle down when I pivot now I can take my two pocket pieces the outside pocket piece and the lining pocket piece and put them right sides together I'm getting match up my notches on the sides so they're right on top of each other and smooth the whole thing out we use the same pattern piece for these pockets so they should match up pretty nicely we're going put some pins in going perpendicular to the edge along the top and along the bottom of our pocket the top is where the point is and the bottom is where the curve is the sides of the pocket are where the notches are we're not going to sew that right now so first some pins in along that top edge I like to put my pins in perpendicular to the edge of that I'm sewing so I can remove them easily when I get to them you don't really want to so over your pins if you can help it chance of a break needle so now I'm going to line this up on my seem allowance so the seam allowance for this pattern is written in the instructions and it's also written on the pattern itself it's five eighths of an inch or one point five centimeters and my seven machine is set up with a needle for a medium weight fabric. This is an eighty twelve needle and I've got my stitch, lang said it two point five a great stitch link for medium weight fabric since most of this sewing is stuff that I want to stay together instead of pull out I'm gonna be doing back stitches at the beginning and at the end I'm gonna start sewing and as I get closer to my mark I'm going to slow down on that I'm going to start to use my hand wheel in order to pivot I want to make sure that my needle is down in the fabric as close to that crossing of chalk marks that I have is I can get you use my hand will to get right on that x needle down in the fabric means that I can lift my presser foot up and rotate my fabric on the needle so now I can rotate my fabric going in the other direction put your presser foot back down on continue along the edge of your seem allowance line on a little backstage of the on that's what the top edge of the pocket is gonna look like a nice sharp point for the bottom inch of the pocket there's no pivot its one smooth curve so I'm gonna pin and then just stitch along this edge at my five eighths of an inch or one point five centimeter c'mon islands the next thing we want to do is trim off some of this extra seem allowance we've used the seam allowance to put the stitching in the correct spot and now we don't need it anymore this pocket is aligned so we don't need to do an edge finish when I'm gonna have you do is trim off about half of that seem allowance through both of the layers, so use your little trimming scissors or your big sheers if you need to and cut that seem allowance in half in one direction and then down to the point and then the same thing on the bottom. The other thing we're going to need to d'oh before we turn this pocket right side out. This is a point, and so we need to clip into the seam allowance right where that point is to allow it to lay flat once it's turned right side out so straight down to your point with the tips of your scissors or your shears almost to the stitching itself. If you ever accidentally did cut through the stitching, you could line this up on your sewing machine and so a strengthening stitch right over where you pivoted before and that would prevent it from ripping so that there is gonna have us be ableto open up that point and it'll lay flat when we turn the pocket right side out, you're going to want to do this on your second set of pockets, and then we can turn both of the pockets right side out, I like to take a minute to finger press it I roll those seem allowances between my fingers and just squish it flat with my fingers before I take it over to the iron depressive really flat, nice and straight curve on the bottom once you finger pressed, grab both of your pockets and meet me over at the iron so you can press your pocket completely flat using your iron, get it all lined up on your ironing board and we're gonna take the iron and again go straight down and hold it there for a few seconds to get it nice and flat, just like so or if you like, you can shift the lining fabric up a little bit to have it stick out a little bit over the top edge and create some faux piping. I'm gonna do mind flat, but it's up to you to play around with it feel free to use a little steam, same thing with my other pocket now I'm ready to sew these pockets to the side front of my skirt, so I have my skirt front pieces, that's pattern piece number two here. Ryan pinned the pattern and I'm going to open them up so that they are both right sides facing up me, this is going to be a mirror image, so you'll see that there are two notches on one side. And one notch on the other side, this assures that you have a right and left of the skirt. I'm going to take my skirt pocket pieces, the notches on the pocket are going to line up with the notches on the skirt, the side that has two notches, it's lining up with the lower notch and the side with one notch that's the notch were lining it up with if you're following along with your pattern, this is step number five, so it has a picture of all of the seam allowances and how to pin it. We're going to pin the not just first to secure this pocket to the skirt, and then we're going to pin down the side edges and across the bottom edge of the pocket again, we want to make sure that the pocket edges and the skirt edges lineup is best we can. I'm putting my pins and perpendicular to the edge when we're finished with this skirt, the stitching that you're going to see will be the stitching along the edge of the pocket. So these side edges those are going to be sewn again when we saw the body of the skirt, but this bottom edge here that's going to finish the pocket and allow you to put things in without them falling out the bottom I'm going to put a couple pins across the bottom edge here we're going to sew these edges at different seem allowances the side edges are going to line up with our three eighths of an inch line or one centimeter, and we're going to do something called an edge stitch along the bottom, which means that we want to get really close to this folded edge of the fabric it's, about an eighth of an inch away from that folded edge. We're going to use part of our presser foot tow line up and try to keep it a straight as we can, because again, this stitching is what you're going to see on the outside of the skirt when you're finished pinning your first pocket, the second pocket is identical and that's going to go right here on the other skirt piece, so I'm going to start out sewing the side edges of my pocket at the three eighths of an inch mark or the one centimeter line, even though I'm basting this stitch, I'm not going to change my stitch length if I wanted to take it out when I was finished, that would be a reason that I would jump my stitch length up to a longer length, but I'm not going to take this out so it's ok to leave it at your two point, five stitch length, I'll start out with a back stitch. On I'm going to sew really close to the bottom edge of my fold there I can use my hand well again to get right. There we go is close to it, it's possible, and I'm gonna pivot again. So I have my needle down in the fabric, gonna lift up the presser foot and pivot to so across the bottom of the pocket. Now I can see this edge of the fold in the hole where my needle goes down on the foot and that's what I'm going to look at, to keep it nice and straight so I can see the edge right here and I'm gonna keep it there the whole time I'm sewing across the bottom when I get over to the other side, it's going to be three eights of an inch steam allowance again. So I'm gonna pivot with my needle down s o right up to the top of the pocket and do my back stitch. And once you cut your threads, you can start in on your second pocket.
Class Materials
Ratings and Reviews
Student Work
Related Classes
Fashion Design