Tutorial: Welt Pockets on Seams

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Well la-di-da. I've been posting on this here blog for a little over a year and I finally feel qualified to do a wee little tutorial. When I decided to add some fancy-ass welt pockets and bound buttonholes to the cape I posted last week I realized the uber basic construction details from Vogue 8776 were probably not going to cut it. Welt pocket tutorials are a dime a dozen but I had a hard time figuring out how to add them when your opening happens on the seam line so I thought I would show you how I figured it out in this welt pocket tutorial.

First off, you need to decide how wide you want your welt to be on on the finished side. I decided 1/2" added a nice graphic element to the openings so I interfaced some cotton sateen and cut pieces that were about 3/4" longer than the opening and about 1 1/2" wide when folded (you can be more precise here but I made my welt patches wider than I needed and trimmed the access later just to be safe).

You will want to iron your interfaced welt patch with the wrong sides together and pin it to the right side of your fabric. You also want to interface the opening on the main fabric, both for stability, and for ease of marking.

As for the markings, you will mark the following:

  • width of the opening
  • the seam allowance line (in this case 5/8")
  • your sew line & the line where you want your welt fabric to end when lined up with your main fabric (both this and the sew line should be the same dimension - in my case 1/2")
  • some general markings to show you where you will be cutting once you have sewn the welt to the main fabric (I marked 1/4" from the sew line and width of opening but you may trim this more if necessary)
Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

If you want to be very precise, you can open your welt and baste the folded edge along the bottom line in the above picture to the right side of the main fabric. You would then fold the welt over the basted line, sew along your sew line, and then remove the basting stitches on the wrong side of the fabric. I skipped this step and just pinned and adjusted as necessary but the anal obsessives among us may want to go for the extreme precision route.

After you have lined up your welt patch properly on the right side of your fabric, you will sew along your sew line. You may want to baste it just to double check that it is the right width when it is turned inside and then sew again to reinforce your stitches.

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

Now that you have sewn your welt pocket to the fabric, you want to trim the welt along your cut lines (again, I marked about 1/4" from the sew line and width of the opening). Make sure you cut to the edge of your sew line on the diagonal. This will ensure you avoid puckers at the corners when you flip the welt to the inside of the fabric.

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

After trimming your opening, you will flip the welt to the inside of the opening and iron it into place. I hope the photo below makes this clear

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

After ironing it, this is what your opening should look like from the right side. Keep in mind, the edge of your welt MUST line up with your seam line so that when you sew your two pieces together, your welts will meet perfectly at the seam line.

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

After ironing your welt into place, you must sew down the edge of your welt to the 1/4" seam of your main fabric on each side. You can now trim the excess fabric on each side.

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

Once both welts have been sewn to each part of your garment, you can sew your seams together and press them open.

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

After pressing your seams on both sides, your finished welt opening should look like this from the right side (make sure you are as precise as possible when marking your openings or you find yourself with two slightly different lengths as seen below. Oops!):

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns
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For this cape, I had 4 welt openings to produce. Two of them had pockets. You can easily sew in your pockets prior to sewing your seams closed. I forgot to take pictures of this part but I will show you how to finish the inside of the openings.

You want your lining opening to line up with bottom of the welt. Pin a piece of interfacing to the right side of your lining. Mark and sew an opening that is 5/8" (seam allowance) plus the width of your welt (in this case 1/2").

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

After trimming your opening to a 1/4" of your sew line, the wrong side of your fabric should look like this:

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

At this point you will flip your interfacing to the inside. Press it into place.

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

Your lining with interfaced opening will look this after being pressed:

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

To avoid puckering at the corners, make sure you trim your corners as closely as possible to the seam line on the diagonal.

Once you have interfaced, sewn and trimmed the openings of your two lining pieces, you can sew your pieces together, making sure to press open your seams. It will look like this on the wrong side:

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

And like this on the right side:

Welt Pocket Tutorial // Vogue 8776 Cape // Closet Core Patterns

Once you have your lining and outer fabric prepped in the above fashion, you can assemble your cape. The final step is to use tiny pick stitches to attach the lining to the welt opening from the inside.

Whew. Describing this process was more difficult that I anticipated. Hopefully it is clear if anyone ever needs to sew a welt on the seam! Hit me up with questions if anything is confusing.

In other news, I will be dedicating the rest of October to making my most ambitious Halloween costume yet. Over the coming weeks I will be posting pics of costumes past, and would like to host a little giveaway to whoever manages to guess my new costume based on the hints I will be slowly doling out. Hope you are enjoying autumn!

Tripping the World Capetastic

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You'll have to excuse the Next Top Model face here but I can't help it - I feel like pretty hot sh*t in this new cape.

Oh Cape. You challenged me at every turn. Like with a difficult child, I had to be patient, firm but loving, and spend many hours watching Buffy while hand-sewing almost everything (that is how you handle a difficult child, right? Future Mother of the Year, right here).

It started innocently enough. I had a random "Must make animal print cape" moment which gnawed at my soul for weeks. I searched the internets high and low for a reasonable leopard facsimile but most of the offerings looked like hive-inducing stuffed animal carcasses. While hunting the fabric district of Montreal, I discovered this sinfully soft upholstery with a tiny abstract black print for only $8 a yard (I sensed a theme when I got home and realized it was a very similar print to this dress and this dress). It seemed drapey enough to use for a garment so I snatched it up along with a fabulous aqua coat lining, some big round buttons and a yard of wool interfacing I never ended up using.

Behold. Cape Cozy Fantastico.

Closet Core Patterns - Vogue 8776 Cape
Closet Core Patterns - Vogue 8776 Cape
Closet Core Patterns - Vogue 8776 Cape

Closet Core Patterns - Vogue 8776 Cape
Closet Core Patterns - Vogue 8776 Cape
Closet Core Patterns - Vogue 8776 Cape

I really have no words for how much I love this dude. Except for all the words I am about to use: it's hella warm (even without a wool lining), it goes with EVERYTHING (in my world animal print is a neutral), it is made with an almost couture obsessed hand (well, my hand stitching is kind of all over the place bit you know, the intent was there), it's softer than a baby cheetah, and unlike most capes, due to the placement of the armholes you can still wear it with a purse over your shoulder (CRUCIAL).

I made it using Vogue 8776 after seeing this beautiful version by the lovely Erica B with some overly ambitious modifications. Like many of us, I pre-ordered Gertie's book (which is amazing by the way and a must have for any sewist's library) and really wanted to try her method for bound buttonholes. I figured the low pile on the upholstery would look weird with machine bound holes. I've also been wanting to do welt pockets so I thought, oh hell, let's get knee deep in this madness and go ALL THE WAY. Yep. I lost my couture sewing technique virginity to a cape. It was so romantic.

I practiced on a scrap before braving the bound buttonholes and realized all my anxiety leading up to it was unfounded. They are quite easy to do, even on such a thick fabric, but may I make a suggestion? Don't mark your openings with ballpoint pen. I naively assumed that you would not see anything on the right side of the fabric but some of the ink leaked and you can see a little blue on some of the buttonhole corners. I would have had an emotional breakdown but I realized that with the busyness of the print you don't really notice. The wrong side of the fabric was too rough for chalk and invisible markers aren't as accurate. If someone could suggest a fine-tip marking solution I would be most grateful.

As for the welt pockets, I had to McGyver a solution since all the tutorials I found online were for cutting a hole in a single piece of fabric, and the openings on this cape all happened on a seam. I took a bunch of photos of my process which I will be sharing later in the week if anyone else wants to try to do the same on this or another pattern.

The pattern did not originally call for a lining but the wrong side of my fabric would have been too scratchy and I love that dramatic moment when you open a jacket to reveal a beautifully coloured lining. This one in particular has a warm fuzzy side which gives additional warmth. It was a little tricky assembling it since the exterior fabric is SO heavy but I managed.

And did I mention the epic amounts of hand-sewing? I'm glad I stopped keeping track of how much time I spend on projects because when you get really into the details, you can easily get halfway through season 3 of Buffy before knowing where the time went. All the buttonholes, inside and out, all the welt pockets, the hem... let's just say me and my thimble got real intimate. The only problem is that I'm not sure I lined up the button openings perfectly on the front and facing so there is a little distortion here and there. Nothing earth shattering, but still.

I think it's the perfect mix of modern shape + vintage vibe which kind of sums up my style in a nutshell. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go stroke and fondle my cape. Nothing weird about that at all.

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