Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Easy add-on Pockets (or how to make a 5 year old deliriously happy)

You might remember this dress from our beach side photo shoot a few weeks ago.


It's a cute plain knit dress that cost under $10 new. I usually don't go for matchy stuff for the kids (since it's just about impossible to find five things in all their sizes that go together) but for the sake of nice pictures I do my best. My issue with matchy-matchy clothes is that it really boggs down the individual personalities of each kid and makes it a pain to get them dressed since 9 out of 10 someone's something that goes with it is lost/dirty/stained. (This is purely my opinion and yes, I do think matched outfits are cute).

So, Cordelia donned her plain yellow dress and I frowned. Uhmph, I thought, she needs more oopmh. So, we went down to the sewing area and picked out some fabric to make pockets. Every little kid needs pockets to hold their "stuff".


She chose mermaids with honey comb insides. I actually already had these cut for a quilt so it knocked time off preping the fabric.

Cut 4 squares 1/2' larger than the desired finished size. They can be all the same but Cordi wanted the honey combs too. I think it's cute.

Pin them right sides together and sew a 1/4" around THREE SIDES leaving a 1/4" space from the end of the unsewn end.



Snip off the edges and turn inside out, use a pencil to poke out the edges to make sharp corners.


It's nice to have a little help too.


We also embellished them a bit with some blue large ricrac to make it look like waves. Cordelia was really excited about this little addition. (sorry for the crummy lighting).

Fold in the tops using a ruler to make sure they come out the same size. Pin in place and sew across the open top (and across the ricrac of you add it).


Since we're dealing with a knit, we had to really make sure to pin these down well so the fabric didn't shift or pucker when we sewn the cotton pockets on.

Sew around three sides making sure to reinforce where the top of the pocket meets the dress. These will get a lot of wear and you want to make sure it doesn't rip.


What a difference some easy 15 minute pockets make! Cordelia -who liked the dress well enough to begin with - LOVES her "new" mermaid pocket dress. And no one else will have one like it.

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