61 to go & mini tutorial for a side seam pocket closure

Hello! I wrote this about a month ago, and then a bunch of other stuff happened. At the top there is a tutorial of sorts for this very 80s side-pocket-opening and then some chatting.

 

 Skirt:

I made it from a faux patchwork I inherited from my grandma & a matching fabric I was able to procure via eBay 

The pocket opening!

For my diagrams the grey is wrong side of the fabric, white is the right side of the fabric & the red lines are where you should sew.

Start with  a pattern that opens at the side seam & two pocket bags with a straight side and top and a round bottom. If you want the pocket to usable make the rounded section very deep before coming back up to the straight section.

The waistband of the pattern will be lengthened to include the width of one of the pocket bags. 

1. Attach each pocket back to  it's corresponding front and back piece right sides together, with a smaller seam allowance than the rest of the project. 

2. Sew pocket bag right sides together, then continue down the side seam with the regular seam allowance. 

3. Press and pin the front pocket and front skirt so they are folded wrong sides together. Optionally, you can sew down the side seam where the pocket s attached (pic)

Back pocket will be pressed  to lay flat as an extension of the back skirt piece

3. In this position (front pocket folded in and back pocket laying flat) that we attach the waistband onto the skirt

if it could be flat this is how it should look.

4. Sew on some buttons and buttonholes and you're done! 

kinda what it should look like on the inside.

  

I have no idea what to call this but I found some other tutorials for basically the same thing:

https://blog.megannielsen.com/2017/04/sew-pockets-concealed-side-opening-flint-pants-tutorial/

https://www.threadsmagazine.com/project-guides/fit-and-sew-pants/a-moveable-waist

https://www.reddit.com/r/sewing/comments/x7omqf/why_dont_these_pants_need_a_zipper/ 

Dress: 

Then we have this really cute tent dress! I made it from this pattern (put info) maybe 6 years ago? I just needed to elasticate the sleeves & replace the ribbon with a hook and eye.

 

 I actually made two mesh bun covers last week as well! (pattern here) I used fingering yarn to so they were much smaller & and for the last row I did a mesh (1dc 2ch and 1 hdc then 2 ch) repeated until the start of the row. The dc went in between the arches (low point) and the hdc went into the middle stitch on the chain arch (high point). (maybe pic) then I made a long chain to use as a drawstring.

Next projects: 

Both are wall art, a cross stitch project and a quilt!

 Life updates:

For anyone that's interested in my life here's how my February has been... the first thing that happened was that my sewing machine broke! A week or so after that my 3 yr long relationship ended. We just signed the lease in January, so we will be living together for the next year... We are best friends so I think it will be okay (and there's 2 bedrooms in the apartment so that helps). We were supposed to just go on a break and I offered to go live with my parents for a while, but it ended up not working out so we live together now. 

If you want to know the tea here it is............... some of my family members are hoarders. Well, the first day I got at my parents house I found a cat litter box they they forgot about @_@ They had recently adopted a stray cat & didn't get him fixed for a month and so there was animal feces and urine EVERYWHERE. I tried staying in a motel for as long as my finances let me, but after a week I couldn't anymore and I reached my breaking point, cat smell makes me nauseous + loose my appetite, the motel was so cold I was waking up every 3 hours, and of course, I had just gotten broken up with (and yes my family kept asking me "what I did wrong"). I was tring to help them clean the common areas of the house for the whole week and at one point my family told me that dealing with all the clutter was tiring so my job became cleaning + decluttering. Going through family memories + trash + cleaning cat pee off of every surface wore me down and I had a psychotic break while my family was watching movies and laughing without me. I ended up leaving in the middle of the night. I was really lucky I had a friend I could call to stay with. She dropped me off at my apartment in the morning! The last thing that happened was that I got a job! I'm really anxious because I have to drive a lot (my car broke down in September after I got my drivers license but I finally have it back!) and I'm not used to driving at all ... the last time I drove was 6 months ago... >_< But it's related to my degree and it pays semi well & the hours are really flexible (3-4 days a week at full time) so I'm hopeful about it! The speedometer is still broken so I have to use my phone to tell the speed. Anyways that's all that's happened since January 30th

 Be seeing you ~