Re-making homemade clothes (now with added pockets!)

Making your own clothes can be a great way to opt out of the cycle of fast fashion impulse purchases and inevitable dissatisfaction. It will teach you the worth of clothes, as you’ll learn how long they take to make and the variety of skills you need. It can also be an opportunity to finally have clothes that fit properly, rather than having to make do with the imperfect sizing of mass-produced clothing. But there are also pitfalls to making your own clothes, so how do we overcome these to make home dressmaking truly sustainable?

One of the main advantages of making your own clothes is that you can make something to your exact specifications. But when you’re short on time or money, it’s all too tempting to cut corners in order to have something new to wear as soon as possible. It’s also easy to be seduced by fabric that might not fit with your personal style, to buy more fabric than you’ll ever be able to use or to make things you might not want to wear over and over again. The cycle of overconsumption is difficult to break out of, even when it comes to hobbies that can have many positive benefits. 

I made a dress and cardigan-style jacket about five years ago, but I had noticed that they had crept to the back of my wardrobe, and I’d constantly favoured other clothes over them. I didn’t want to get rid of them, but I did have to be honest with myself about why I wasn’t wearing them, and work on ways to make them more wearable. 

At the Style Yourself Sustainable event (find out more in this blog post), Alex from Sewrendipity spoke about her handmade wardrobe, and the pride she takes in all her creations. She keeps everything she makes, but frequently goes back and fixes faults in garments she made earlier in her sewing career as her knowledge of techniques improves. One of the things I love about sewing, and why it has made such a satisfying career for me, is that there is always something new to learn. Even though I sew professionally, I’d be the first to admit that I cut corners when I make things for myself, and that there is always room for improvement!

My navy dress was a nice shape, but it was very plain, and it could definitely have benefitted from the edition of some pockets! I’d kept the leftover original fabric (I must have subconsciously realised that I needed to go back and add to it) so adding pockets wasn’t a difficult job (to find out more about adding pockets to your clothes, check out my previous blog post about pockets). 

I realised I’d been quite reluctant to go back to the dress and add pockets because I’d considered it finished, so I was interested to see Amy Twigger Holroyd discuss this problem in her book Folk Fashion: Understanding Homemade Clothes. Over the course of her research, Amy had discovered that makers were more reluctant to go back and fix shop-bought or finished homemade items, as the complete or “closed” nature of these garments made them more intimidating to tackle. Clothes that were damaged or unfinished were seen as less daunting because they were “open”, inviting the maker to alter or fix them. Despite ignoring the dress for a year, it only took me an hour to add the pockets, and I wish I’d done it sooner! 

I also wanted to embellish the dress, so the simple pattern of running stitches around the neckline, waist and hem became something I could do without having to apply much thought on long train journeys, or when I wanted something to do with my hands while watching TV (If anyone else struggles to stop multi-screening I’d definitely suggest a simple embroidery project). The fabric of the dress looks interesting up close, but looks dull and flat from far away, so the glossiness of the thread adds a new layer of texture. Keeping the thread the same colour as the dress fabric means the embroidery isn’t overwhelming; it draws attention to the cut of the dress rather than overpowering it.

My jacket was even simpler to tackle: of course the main issue (again) was that I hadn’t added pockets! I didn’t just want to slap on a plain square patch pocket, so I used the reverse side of the fabric, matched the motifs up with the ones on the coat, and cut pocket shapes that echoed the shapes on the fabric. This has added a bit of textural interest to an otherwise flat and boxy garment, and the slight slouchiness of the pockets adds a bit of volume over the hips, subtly altering the proportions of the jacket without adding more waist shaping, which would have changed my original design. 

By looking through my wardrobe and working out which garments I preferred wearing and why, I was able to make alterations to this dress and jacket to make them more wearable. The issue of pockets (or the lack thereof) in women’s clothing is a bit of a hot topic right now, but I genuinely feel frustrated with an outfit if it doesn’t have pockets. I carry a backpack most days when I travel to work, so I need somewhere safe and accessible to put my phone and Oyster card. And yes, I know we probably shouldn’t be as reliant on our phones as we are, but I like to listen to podcasts on mine at work. A phone-sized pocket means I don’t have to waste time fiddling with my phone and headphones every time I leave my desk to go to my sewing machine or the iron (some of my colleagues have made little cross-body pouches for their phones or MP3 players, so maybe this is a topic for another time?)

The best thing about making or altering our own clothes is that we get to decide which features are important to us. Fast fashion cost-cutting means we aren’t going to get everything we want from a garment. Breaking out of the fast fashion cycle means retraining ourselves to see our clothes as “open” garments which can change with us, and seeing the time we put into improving our clothes as time well spent.

Fixing fast fashion: adding pockets to your clothes

“I like your dress”

“Thanks! IT HAS POCKETS!”

If you’ve spent any time on the internet in the last few years, you’ll probably be familiar with this meme. If you’re a person who wears dresses, chances are you will have said exactly the same thing when someone compliments your outfit.

Everyone seems to love pockets, but fast fashion cost-cutting means that they are often left out of dresses, skirts and even some trousers designed for women. Visiting the Balenciaga exhibition at the V&A last year, I was struck by how many of the couture evening coats and capes had pockets; private clients must have been requesting pockets for occasionwear as well as more practical everyday clothes. It is frustrating that at a time when we have devices that help us to live our lives on the go, we have nowhere to store these devices about our persons. My smartphone is at the small end of the scale, and I wouldn’t trust it to stay put in some trouser pockets. Rachel Charlton-Dailey points out the disparity between the sensible-sized pockets in clothing designed for men, and the frequently useless or fake pockets in womenswear in her article for the Nopebook,  Pockets Are A Tool Of The Patriarchy.

One solution is to add pockets to our own clothes, the easiest of course being a patch pocket, a square or rectangle stitched onto the garment around three sides. If you prefer a pocket that is less of a design feature, it’s easier than you might think to add a pocket into the side seam of any garment that isn’t skin tight. I’ve chosen this skirt to demonstrate on as I was going to shorten it to mid-calf anyway, so I’ll have enough fabric to make my pocket bags from the piece I cut off the hem. If you want to add pockets to a garment that you aren’t planning to alter, buying a piece of fabric about 30-50cm wide in a similar material to your garment should give you enough to make two pockets. 

To work out the size of my pocket bag I used my hand as a guideline; allowing at least 3-4cms all the way round means I have a decent sized pocket and enough seam allowance. 

I cut out two pairs of pockets (4 separate fabric pieces) and overlocked them together around the bottom and ‘inside’ edge. It’s easy to do this with a regular sewing machine too: sew a line 1cm away from the edge of the fabric, then use a zig-zag stitch on the edge to stop the fabric from fraying.

I am extending my pocket bag up into the waistband to anchor it more securely, but you can cut your pockets without this if you are short on fabric. If you’re doing this, your fabric pieces will look more like a pair of mittens without thumbs, so you can sew all the way around your pocket pieces at this stage, just leaving the opening for your hand.

You will need to unpick a section of the side seam of your garment to insert the pocket; it’s easiest to start at least 3-4cm below the waistband. I unpicked a section that was 15cm long, then backstitched the ends of the original seam so that they wouldn’t unravel any more. I then marked a 15 cm gap on the open edge of my pocket bag and finished off the edge above and below these marks, leaving a 1cm seam allowance around the open edge of my pocket bag.

To attach the pocket, pin the seam line on your garment to the seam line on your pocket bag with the right sides facing each other. Machine stitch all around the opening of the pocket, then finish off the raw edge with a zig-zag stitch.

You can then press the edges of the pocket so they lie flat and don’t show against the edge of the garment. If you are attaching the top of the pocket bag to the waistband, you can do this by hand if you don’t want to open the waistband up. Otherwise, you can pin the top edge of the pocket bag into place and sew from the right side of the garment so your stitch line will be as unobtrusive as possible.

And... you’re done! Sling your phone, keys or bus pass into your new pockets for a low maintenance life on the go. Now, when someone compliments you on your outfit, you’ll be able to say “Thanks! It has pockets!”