I made pockets

I wear clothes designed for women, so for my whole life I've suffered from Girl Pockets. I decided to finally do something about it. Enter Pocket Extenders. I referenced lots of YouTube videos and tutorials to get an idea of what I wanted then did my own version. 

Basically I turned my pants inside out, cut off the bottom of the pocket, inserted a prepared pocket extension from cotton fabric I had on hand, sewed them together, then turned the pants right side out. Pocket fabric tends to fray badly so I took the extra step to serge the seams to clean them up but I found that does add bulk to the junction between the old and new parts of the pockets which creates a visible pocket line when wearing if the pants are fitted. I don't really care about that, I'd rather have the clean hem.

In addition to improving my casual pants, I added phone pockets to my athletic pants as well. I had a couple pairs of shorts that had pockets built in and wanted to spread the goodness. Also I didn't want to do laundry on a non-laundry day because I only wanted to wear the pants with pockets.

I bought this stretchy mesh from Joann, cut out rectangles the width of my phone by the length plus an inch. I folded over the short top edge twice and zig zag stitched across. The mesh doesn't fray but I wanted a more substantial edge there to make it easier to find by feel and slide my phone into the pocket. I placed the pockets where I wanted them to sit and zig zag stitched the sides and bottom to the leg right along the edge of the fabric. Boom, done.

The mesh is a comparable stretch to all the pants, thin enough to not add bulk but strong enough to securely hold the phone. The extra length also seats the phone deep enough that it doesn't fall out of the pocket when I sit which is a problem for one of my shorts that already had a built in pocket. I think I bought just 1/8 yd of the mesh and it was still like twice as much as I needed for half a dozen phone pockets.

I can't believe I waited so long to do this. It was so easy and fast and my wardrobe is 100% better than it used to be.