Here's a quick sewing project for converting a long-sleeved denim men's shirt into an oversized smock-style vest or apron with lined pockets.
I started with a long-sleeved denim men's shirt like the one in the photo below. (I forgot to take a "before" photo of my shirt, but mine looked almost identical to the one below.)
To make a pattern for the large patch pockets, I used my husband's Carhartt vest as the prototype. These pockets are large and deep, so there's plenty of room for stashing a phone, or my hands, or whatever else I would like to carry in there.
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| Husband's vest |
I laid my husband's vest out flat on my fabric cutting table. Then I took a sheet of newspaper and laid it over the pocket. Using a pencil, I gently traced around the perimeter of the vest pocket to transfer its shape onto the newspaper, then I cut out that pocket shape. I placed the newspaper pocket over a piece of lightweight scrap cardboard I had in my craft stash and, using a ruler and pencil, I marked a half-inch larger (for the sewing seam allowance) to the size of the newspaper pocket around all the sides, then used the ruler to connect those lines, which are the lines for cutting out the pocket pattern on the cardboard.
Originally I was going to make the pocket pattern using a sheet of thin cutting-board vinyl, similar to the ones shown in the photo below, because it's durable for multiple uses as a pattern guide yet thin enough to be cut to size with scissors, but I couldn't find the sheets today that I know I have in my craft stash somewhere, which I bought years ago for this purpose, so I improvised and used the lightweight cardboard instead. Either way, it creates a pattern piece that can be reused for future projects where I want to have this same type of pocket.
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| Vinyl cutting-board sheets |
There are many DIY tutorials online for how to upcycle shirts (or even jeans!) into a vest. One tutorial that I enjoyed was this one by Broken Ghost DIY on YouTube. The way she cut off the collar in her project is very similar to the technique I used here. I carefully trimmed off the flap portion of the collar of my shirt, leaving the collar band below intact for a sort-of mandarin collar effect.
Next, I carefully cut off the sleeves, cutting outside of the seams where the sleeves were sewn onto the shirt (cutting on the sleeve side of the seams, in other words). The tiny bit of fabric left behind after cutting off the collar and the sleeves will fray in the wash and lend a rustic touch to the edges.
I laid my pocket pattern over one of the sleeves and was gratified to see that there was enough fabric in the upper part of one sleeve to allow me to cut out two pockets. If one sleeve hadn't been big enough to cut out two pockets, I knew I would have been able to use the tops of both sleeves to cut one pocket out of each. But since I was able to cut both pockets out of one sleeve, now I have another whole extra sleeve to use as scrap fabric for another project later.
For the pocket lining, I dug into my fabric stash and selected two pink bandanas just waiting to be needed for something. I think the pink bandana fabric makes a nice accent/contrast to the blue denim. All together, I cut two pocket fronts out of the denim and two pocket linings out of the pink bandana fabric and then pinned the pieces together with right-sides facing.
I sewed the pocket fronts to the linings, leaving an unsewn gap of a few inches at the bottom of each pocket for turning them right-side out.
After sewing, I trimmed the excess fabric at each corner, then turned the pockets right-side out and pressed them smooth with my iron. With the seam allowance pressed to the inside, I topstitched along the bottom edge of each pocket to secure the areas that were previously left unsewn for turning the pockets right-side out.
To position the pockets on the front of the shirt, I laid the shirt flat on my cutting table and then placed the pockets where I thought they looked good, using my cardboard pocket pattern as a guide to ensure the pockets were level with each other. I pinned them in place and then tried on the vest to see if the pockets were positioned at a comfortable height for my hands. Once I had the pockets pinned exactly where I wanted them, I sewed the pockets in place with my sewing machine, backstitching several times at the beginning/end to reinforce the pocket openings.
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| A peek inside the pockets |
The nice thing about making pockets this way is that there are no raw edges exposed anywhere, because they are all hidden between the pocket face and the pocket lining.
And, just like that, my smock vest/apron was done and ready to wear!
