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(Still waiting for) pockets

If you google "pockets" (or at least, if I google "pockets"), the top thingy leads you to a menswear designer. Which I think is rather rubbing it in.

Women's trousers famously have completely ludicrous attachments which do not deserve the name, but if like me you happen to have given trousers up as a bad job (because, really, how much time is one expected to spend trying the damned things on?), and decided the future is skirt-shaped, things are even worse.

Skirts and dresses don't just have useless pockets -- quite often there are no pockets at all! Which means, if I leave my office to buy lunch and do not want to lug a handbag or a large wallet around -- or carry a lone card which you know I would leave at the first available flat surface -- my option is basically stuffing the thing up my sleeve. Which is inelegant, to say the least. And should I also want to bring my phone, well...

Hence the sewing machine.

That is a lie. I got the sewing machine because I am short and at 15 I saw the future before me. But it has proved useful. Also because of the pockets.

Sources are unclear on whether the reason for the lack of pockets is a) that they ruin the silhouette (what?), b) that they are too expensive (really?), c) that they are trying to force us into buying handbags (I will murder you in your sleep), or d) that they are misogynist douchebags who just don't want women to have lives (see c). Either way, time to thwart that nonsense.

So, I mentioned I have a sewing machine.

Inserting pockets in skirts and dresses takes hardly any skill at all and very little time. And it gives you a chance to add a lovely detail. For example, this purple skirt, which I bought several years ago from some high street retailer now has pockets full of Jane Austen quotes. It is living its best life.

Sometimes you want invisible pockets, in which case that combines very well with having to shorten the hem of whichever skirt you may have bought that was made for women who are your size around the waist but somehow have freakishly long legs: cut off the superfluous fabric and attach to left-over fabric from another project or swatches of fabric you may have lying about.
Like so:

Just open the side seams, and attach. Add support stitches and press to make it pretty. There are more fancy pocket options, but they take correspondingly larger amounts of time and allow for more catastrophic failure. The one potential difficulty here lies in making sure the pockets do not end up upside-down or inside-out, but I am fairly sure the mental exercise of spatial imagination is good for you. Or you can practice.

Sewing as feminist practice, and presto: pockets.
Category
Miscellaneous
Tags
sewing
women's fashion
stupid
sexism
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4871