I Made a Pocket!

Did you know that enormous pockets were the norm in the Renaissance?  Neither did I before I started doing serious research on 16th century clothing.  They started to appear in the late 14th century, and remained in fashion at least through the 18th, but went out when sheer dresses came into style around 1800.  Ladies' pockets tied on around the waist, rather than being sewn into the garment, and would look a little funny under a sheer gown!  I have no idea if they came back in under the more modest dresses of the Victorian period or not.  So if you've ever wondered, like I did, why medieval people usually have purses or pouches but Renaissance people usually don't, this is why!

So, naturally, I had to have pockets!  Or rather, pocket, singular, since one is more than enough space to hold everything I need with me at Renfaire!  I made one last year when I was just getting into historical sewing, and it works well, but the tie- which will show under my open bodiced Venetian dress- is red, so I'm making another using the same method.  The pocket and its tie are made of a midweight white linen that matches my camica well so it hopefully won't be too obvious.

I decided to embroider my pocket, mostly for fun and to practice my embroidery on something that won't actually show when I'm wearing it.  First I outlined the front piece of the pocket on the fabric, making sure I gave myself enough room to store the essentials- phone, lip balm, wallet, sunscreen, etc.  Then I drew a simple, Italian inspired but not quite historical spiral pattern on the pocket in blue tailor's pencil and put the whole piece of fabric in my embroidery hoop.  doing the embroidery before cutting helps prevent your pattern piece from fraying while you embroider it!  Since this piece isn't actually going to be seen while I'm wearing it, I didn't do anything too elaborate.  It's pretty much all stem stitch with a little satin stitch, all in 3 strands of wine red DMC floss.

Once the embroidery was done, I folded the fabric over and cut out the front and back pieces together, leaving a double seam allowance so I can do French seams.  I pinned the two pieces together, wrong sides together, stitched using half the wide seam allowance, trimmed the seam allowance, flipped them right sides together, and stitched again to create a French seam.  I usually prefer flat felled seams for garments, but the bulk of a French seam doesn't matter on a pocket.

I stitched up the bottom and both sides of the pocket with French seams and then made a tie by sewing together thin strips of linen to make a total length long enough to wrap around my waist and tie a bow.  I sewed this to the pocket, right sides together, then flipped it, tucked in the raw edges, and whip stitched the entire length.

This project was really quick and easy, apart from the embroidery, which took some time.  I really like how it turned out, though I realized after the fact that I accidentally made it a lot smaller than my other pocket.  It still has enough room for everything I need, though, so this doesn't matter much!  I also tried it on with my Venetian dress, and the tie blends in with my camica well enough that it's not really noticeable.  So that's one more small piece ready to go for this year's RenFaire!