I, along with many others, own Janet Arnold's books. It took me less than 5 minutes to find, and procure a pattern. Then it came onto the fun job of embroidery. I didn't fancy crewel, which would have been popular at the time. I've done a very nice panel of crewel before in my embroidery days, but I'm not really a big fan. Instead, I designed my own.
Bad thing is, I can't draw to save myself. It's why I only ever used embroidery kits with the pattern printed on. I had to give up on this pocket being symmetrical, it was hard enough just drawing the thistle and flowers. The second problem came when I cut out the cotton and had to transfer the pattern.
It's more HA to use linen, but I had cotton, so that's what I used. This project came during the time when I was being rebellious against HA, so cotton it is. Like I do with many projects, I got a pencil, and I drew a pattern onto the surface of the cotton, lightly, and it would be covered by thread.
Over my years of embroidery, and obviously eyelet sewing, I've collected a lot of embroidery thread, so I managed to complete this project with most of the ones in my stash, the orange was the only one I didn't have.
I also had the smallest embroidery hoop known to man, from a teenie, tiny, project I did many years ago, which now sits proudly framed at my parent's house. I did order a larger one, but found that the smaller one was actually the perfect size. Bad thing, and something I forgot, is sometimes hoops leave dirty marks on fabric, especially when they've been kept in a sewing box for 7 years. Thankfully, it's very light, and only on one bit, so it's hardly noticeable.
My design is partly inspired by 18th century designs, and partly modern, very much like my current sewing techniques, so this pocket is literally me. If you don't know I'm Scottish, then you must be new. I, like many fellow Scots, am very proud of my country and heritage, and I ended up going all out on this project, partly because I own a million metre roll of tartan bias binding (I've had it for 3 years and it still hasn't run out despite being whipped out for nearly everything that isn't seen).
Like a few extant pockets, the centre motif is the Scottish thistle, which considering my dire drawing skills I'm very proud of, it turned out better than I imagined, which is rare. The other flowers and vines are inspired by other extant pockets I found from the quickest Google image search any seamstress has ever done. The initials are mine, unsure if I'd seen pockets with initials on or just made it up.
I did come across a few costuming blogs about pockets, although they were also few and far between, and they were all hand sewn, I think one was patchwork, which is massively HA, and I said, to hell with that! My railing against HA continues. This thing is machine sewn, but the embroidery is all hand done, so I think even that will appease the harshest HA critics.
It didn't actually take me that long. I could only remember a few stitches in embroidery and couldn't really be bothered looking up more, so it was really simple, none of this fancy stitching.
