the best of inset side pockets

who doesn’t love great pockets?

whether they are in your pants, skirt, dress or sweater, in my opinion pockets are most welcome! last year, when I designed warmth, I played around with side pockets and developed a construction method that provides exceptionally sturdy pockets and now I’ve used them again in my new design, harriet cardigan. in your pattern you’ll have instructions to create linings that are worked with short rows on each front of your sweater and also on each side of the back. this provides 2 layers that are then seamlessly attached at the bottom to your sweater! In this tutorial. I’ll give a little overview of the construction and conclude with a video demonstrating the join. it’s not difficult, just a bit finicky, so be patient with yourself when you get to the joining row. in your patterns, you won’t need any of the set-up information provided here, as it’ll be included and already worked out for you. but, if you’re trying to add pockets to an existing sweater I hope this general overview will get you going! this overview is written for top down sweaters. if you’ve got either harriet or warmth already, you can skip down to step 4 of this post.

step 1: pocket placement

For great side pockets, you want the location of the opening to be located a couple of inches towards the front of the center side of your sweater. depending on how wide you want your pockets to be, you’ll have to play around with the exact placement but generally you need at least an inch or two in order to place your hands comfortably in the pockets. If you have an existing sweater with a side opening that you like, it’s a great idea to lay it out flat and actually measure the distance from center side to opening and use that to help you determine where you will place your pocket. You’ll use your stitch gauge to determine how many stitches this translates to and this will be where you separate your fronts & back + extra stitches to create your pocket opening.

for the pocket height, again this will depend on both gauge and personal preference. how tall will your pocket be? what distance do you want the top of it to be from the bottom of your sweater and the underarm? once you plan these numbers out in inches/cm you’ll use your row gauge to determine exactly where you will begin working your short rows either from the top of your sweater or from the separation of sleeves from body.

additionally, you’ll need to plan where you’d like your pocket to close in the front, which will be on the wrong side of your sweater. do you want it to go all the way to the buttonband or center front? or do you want to work a few stitches first? it’s all about how wide you want your pocket to be. we will come back to this number at the end, but it’ll be relevant for the width of your linings and when you begin your joining process. once you decide how wide your pocket will be, once again, use your gauge to determine the total number of stitches that will be included on the front of your sweater when you join your linings to your sweater front.

at the end of this step you should have determined the locations of the top and bottom of your pocket opening, as well as the total number of stitches that will be the pocket width.

step 2: calculate lining stitches

I know, you just determined the number of stitches in the width of your sweater front so shouldn’t this number match up? well, it depends on the stitch patterns used in your sweater and lining. in both of my patterns, i’ve chosen to use a linen stitch for my linings which does not share the same gauge in stitches or rows per inch/cm with the stockinette that is featured on the front of both of these garments. you may choose to simply work stockinette linings and therefore not need to do any additional math here. or perhaps you are working with a cabled fabric that equates to a similar gauge as your lining stitch. but, if your lining will be in a separate stitch pattern than your sweater garment, you’ll need to determine the equivalent number of stitches to cover the width you desire in your lining. Don’t worry if you need to increase or decrease stitches, this can all be done in a single row prior to joining your linings with your sweater.

row gauge matters here too. as I mentioned, I use linen stitch for a nice snug fabric with great hold. in both warmth & harriet, this translated to needing more rows in the pocket linings than in the sweater worked alongside it. if you’re starting to be flustered by the math, try out one of my patterns so you can see this pocket in action! but if you’re still with me, if you need more rows in your pocket linings, you’ll simply work what I call “sub short rows” over the linings only every few rows to accommodate those extra rows needed. if you don’t work these extra rows, you’ll find that your lining will pucker your sweater on the front because it won’t be the same height as your opening. to work the sub short rows, simply use a w&t (or your preferred style of short row method) where your lining meets your sweater to work in those extra rows only over the lining section.

use the stitch gauge of your pocket lining width to calculate the total number of lining stitches you’ll need to cast on for your lining. then, determine the difference between your sweater front pocket stitches and your lining stitches and decrease this number of stitches evenly during the final row of your lining.

step 3: create those pocket linings

once you’ve made your calculations, this is the easy part! once you get to the location of the top of your pocket, you’ll separate your sweater into three separate pieces as I mentioned above. each front-which totals the stitches in that will be worked over your pocket plus any extra stitches at the center front of your garment and your back will be the total number of back stitches plus the stitches between center underarm and the pocket opening.

work each section separately. for the fronts, you’ll work to the opening, cast on the total number of lining stitches, work back and forth (including those sub short rows if/when needed) until you get to your total pocket depth. for the back, you’re going to cast on the same number of stitches on both sides of the back panel and do the same work. don’t forget that if your linings are a different total number of stitches than your pocket width, you’ll make that decrease/increase adjustment during the final row of your lining work, working the shaping only over the lining section, not your front or back. on additional tip, in my patterns I work the final stitch before the lining through the back loop to help things look nice and clean. you could probably also do this with the first stitch in the lining section instead (something I might try in the future!)

step 4: join them up

the video tutorial below will show you exactly how to work the join for these amazing, sturdy layers you’ve created. all you’ll be doing is working k3tog’s across both layers of the pocket linings and the front stitches of your sweater that are part of your pocket. the video below shows this process along with more step-by-step written instructions as it goes along.

step 5: finishing

your pocket linings are now seamlessly joined to the bottom of your sweater. hooray! now all that’s left to do is whipstitch your linings closed while simultaneously sewing them to the wrong side of your sweater. don’t go crazy in this step. you don’t need to work your whipstitch stitch-for-stitch, it’s ok for it to be a bit looser than your stitches themselves. be careful not to let your yarn go through to the right side of your sweater. as a final, optional step, in harriet I added cute little X’s at the top corner of each pocket in a contrasting color.

so there you go

are these not just the best? you’ll be absolutely amazed at just how much you can actually put into your pockets (try your phone!) and they won’t sink down and show underneath your hem. I love function, especially when I can make it pretty, too.

I haven’t yet experimented with a single layered lining but theoretically, it should work similarly, just won’t hold quite the same level of sturdiness. I will definitely be trying this on a lighter garment. for single linings, you’ll want to only work the linings next to the back, and skip the linings that are attached to the front. the join will be similar, but it will be with k2tog’s instead of k3tog’s.