Oh yeah!

[soc_puppet]

Some of you may remember me lamenting the fact that my job's newer uniform jackets don't have breast pockets, especially since that's where I used to keep my phone all the time and it made for convenient and relatively covert podcast/audiobook listening. My plan at the time was to save up a little extra money and buy my own uniform jacket, then alter it to my taste: Cut the sleeves down so I don't have to roll them up, use the sleeve cloth for a front pocket, all that fun stuff. I'm reasonably sure I can get a jacket that's more-or-less indistinguishable from what the hotel has anyway.

I mentioned my plan to my boss a little while back, and she said I should check it over with our Food and Beverage director, just to make sure everything was above board and that I'd be okay to do this. On Thursday, I finally got the executive function to do that! I ran into F&B in the hallway after clocking out and brought up my plan. "Yes," I admitted, "I am apparently just that attached to having a front pocket on my uniform jacket."

F&B looked at me and said, "How about instead, you just take home one of our uniform jackets and add a pocket to it? No, you know what? Take two!"

And damned if that isn't a much cheaper option, even if it does mean I won't be cutting any sleeves down. The only problem so far has been that I haven't been able to find even one uniform jacket in my size to take home and alter yet 😂 I took a jacket home on Thursday, only to find out when I got to Joann's that it had been hung up in the wrong section and was a size too small. Then I had to wear it on Friday anyway, because no jackets in my size were clean! (Though I did at least put the too-small jacket to good use in finding a relatively close fabric match at Joann's; if I'm not cutting off and repurposing sleeves, fresh fabric would have to do! Still much cheaper than buying myself even one new jacket.)

Comments

[vriddy]

Yay, pockets! Good luck with your jacket finding & alteration adventures :D

[soc_puppet]

Thank you! I'm pretty close to finishing one pocket base to sew onto a jacket, and am much more anxious about it than when I started 😅 Maybe I should forego locking the stitches via backstitch this time, so there won't be too much damage done to the jacket if it turns out I need to take the pocket back off...

[chemicalcain]

Glad your directors were up for the idea! It sounds like a great plan to modify your work jackets to suit your needs. I work part-time as a tailor and we've added a few pockets, but I always find blazer material hard to finish neatly. I wonder if it would be easier to add the pocket to the inside lining?

[soc_puppet]

Well, it's a chef's coat, so lining isn't really a thing, or we'd probably all pass out from heat exhaustion 😂 Also I'm a pretty amateur seamstrix. I know how to lock stitches and what seam allowance and nap are, and beyond that I'm fairly limited. This is one of my more recent success stories, where I cut off the legs of some pants that were a bit too short for me and turned the extra fabric into outside pockets in the style of butt pockets, and aside from contrasting trim, that's basically what I'm aiming for here. Aside from that, most of my sewing is adding extensions to existing pockets or reinforcing the inner thigh area of my pants/shorts/etc. Or with yarn, which is a different beast altogether.

Anyway, we'll see what F&B has to say; I'm starting with only the one chef coat, mostly because I didn't want to put too many out of commission for too long, but now also so I have a "test version" 😅 I am increasingly glad that I managed to talk the Joann's employee into letting me take a half yard of fabric instead of a quarter yard. It should hopefully still be way too much, but I do like the wider margin for error it provides me.

[chemicalcain]

Oh, I misinterpreted your original post and thought you meant a blazer! I didn't realize you worked as a chef, but a single layer makes so much more sense for a hot kitchen, yes. An outside pocket would be the easiest thing for that. The shorts look good! Hopefully the pocket for your chef's coat is pretty straightforward :)

[soc_puppet]

No worries! I didn't exactly specify anywhere in my post that my job is in food service. I'm officially a "bakery line cook", but the hotel I work for has all the food-makers in pretty much the same chef jacket.

And I got it on! It looks pretty decent too, IMO. The white is as close a match as the Joann's employee could get me, which is pretty darn close, and while the seams aren't exactly machine-straight, I'm not exactly a machine 😉 I think it'll do okay! Now I just need to make sure to make a second jacket-with-pocket, so I'm not up the creek if this one doesn't get through the laundry overnight (or if someone else snatches it 👀)...

[chemicalcain]

A few weeks in the kitchen and the white of the pocket will be exactly the same as the jacket. Either the jacket will discolor over time or the pocket will get bleached with the rest of it. If someone does snatch your pocket-jackets multiple times, maybe eventually they'll just all have pockets ;)

[soc_puppet]

If it gets to the point where I can never find one of my pocketed-jackets, I'll talk to F&B about letting me add pockets to the rest 😉 Hopefully it won't come to that, but I did buy more than twice as much fabric as I thought I'd need, and I'm saving the makeshift pattern as well.

[mistressofmuses]

I'm glad that you will soon have new pockets and that they okay'd that! (Even if your other plan was quite perfect in some ways.)

[soc_puppet]

Same here! I am very much looking forward to using my new pocket!jacket tomorrow 😃

What I was really hoping was to buy a jacket that's a slightly different make/material (these ones are a cotton/poly blend, I want 100% cotton, and that's only if linen isn't an option), but I was 100% prepared to compromise in the name of pockets.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, it sounds like your original idea was more labor-intensive, but would have been a really excellent end result.

But... pockets. :D