With extra pockets!

[corrvin]

Click for embiggening

So I took apart two men's dress shirts in coordinating colors (thrift store, $2.50 each), and made a two-sided strip of fabric about 90" by 7.5". I got two 7.5" x 25"-ish strips out of the back of the shirt, and one each out of either side of the front, and by centering the strip over the breast pocket, I got POCKETS.

The trick to having the pockets in the right place is as follows:

If you want your pockets on the outside and inside of the same place, then your strip should have both pockets at one end, with the opening of the pocket facing the nearest end of the strip.

If you want your pockets one on the outside of one side, and one on the inside of the other (which is what I did), then each pocket should be at either end of the strip, but still with the openings each facing the nearest end of the strip (that is, in opposite directions).

I cut the strips so that the pockets would be about 3" from the top of the bag. I'm still working on the guesstimatics for how to put a pocket in the strap, with its bottom near the top of the bag.

Oh, and here's the inside pocket:

click for embiggening

Final notes:
Like the bag in my last post, this is still based on Doni's Delis "A Little Tutorial". The outside is a vividly green corduroy; the inside is a striped cotton/poly blend. I still have the sleeves of the shirts and lots of scraps for other things. I cut off the buttons and saved them, because my Granny would haunt me otherwise. Those are not my holly bushes, they belong to our fabulous neighbors. Also, I wish my iPhone would record the temperature when a picture was taken, because it is TWENTY FREAKING TWO FAHRENHEIT right now, and I want everyone to appreciate the Sacrifices We Make For Art.

Comments

[seryn]

oooh... pocketses!

I appreciate your sacrifice in taking pictures of this. Because we all know without pictures it didn't happen. But you could, you know, get a coat. Or make one with all the corduroy? :-)

Any chance you're going to do one of your useful diagrams? I'm afraid I didn't quite follow how to get the pockets where I wanted them, but I do have some dead dress shirts. Including one that is one of those yellow felty-flannel kinds. (It isn't a surprise I don't want it as a shirt, right? It does have 2 breast pockets.)

How do you attach the strips of shirt lengthwise to conjoin the fabric? Or rather, did you use the obvious method of making a seam and pressing it flat or did you need to reinforce it somehow? And do the seams look or feel weird on the handle? Do you sew the edges of the whole long strip wrong-sides facing and then invert or do you just pin the double-layer together and assume the bag seams will be enough to keep all the fabric together?

Have you thought about the method for making the bag bottom flat or do you like these pouch-style bags? If you were to do the flat bottom, would you still start from the two-sided fabric or would you make them separately and then join?

And... can I send you my dead shirts for enbaggening?

[corrvin]

"How do you attach the strips of shirt lengthwise to conjoin the fabric? Or rather, did you use the obvious method of making a seam and pressing it flat or did you need to reinforce it somehow?"

I just sewed them together and pressed the seams flat.

"And do the seams look or feel weird on the handle?"

A bit, but if I were being fancy I could balance out all four strips so that they'd end at logical places.

"Do you sew the edges of the whole long strip wrong-sides facing and then invert?" I did, and then sewed up the end seam.

How the pockets work:

The dotted-line pocket on the left is on the underside of the two-sided strip. The solid line pocket on the right is on the top side. As the strip is folded into the bag, one of those pockets will end up on the inside and one will end up on the outside.

If you wanted to, you could sew your shirt into a lining, put both pockets on one side, and use two 7 1/2" strips cut from a commercial piece of fabric, to make a lined bag with two interior pockets.

I could do the seams on the corners to make the bag bottom flat, but if I were going to make a flat-bottomed bag I would actually make it as two rings of fabric, and stitch them together. Like this:

[seryn]

Whoa. That's trippy. the two loop bag plan.

I love how you used things most people throw out and made new stuff from it.

(and thanks for explaining the basics of sewing to someone clueless!)

Thanks also for the diagram... I really just didn't understand what you were trying to say. A picture in time saves a thousand frustrations.