I have been admiring all the Mid-Autumn festival mooncake packaging that is in the Chinese supermarkets right now. I decided to digitize an embroidery design with bunnies and a moon to go on a bag. I switched tracks in the middle to put the design on an 18th century pocket, but I’m planning on re-visiting the bag after this.
I took photos as I was assembling my sampler so here’s a quick blog post on how I assemble 18th century pockets.
I started with my stitched out pockets. These are stitched out on my Babylock Spirit using Isacord polyester thread on a heavy linen. The embroidery files on my Etsy shop for anyone who wants to make some bunny pockets too. =)
I put a liner layer on the back of the embroidered front panel to protect the embroidery. I pin the liner layer to the front panel…
And baste around the outside edge and along the guidelines for the opening. (The basting line is in pink here.)
I cut the opening open.
Using 1/4″ double fold bias tape, I bind the opening edge. I found what works for me is stitching the binding down on one side, hand stitching the corner turn, and then machine stitching the other side. I haven’t been able to figure out a good way to use the machine to go around that corner, so I just do it by hand.
Then I take the backing fabric and stitch it to the front panel. (It’s the green line on this photo which is a little hard to see. Sorry!)
I cut along the outside guideline…
And bind the outside edge.
I like to machine stitch one side of the bias binding and hand finish the backside so no machine stitching is visible.
I take a wider piece of bias binding and bind the top edge, leaving the two ends open to create a channel.
And done! A piece of twill tape will be threaded through the bias tape channel to tie the pockets around my waist.
