How to Sew a Patch Pocket on a Ken Doll’s Shirt (Advance 2899) #SewingTips #VintageSewing

A vintage Ken doll models a handmade crisp white collared shirt and matching white cotton trousers (pants), made from Advance 2899 for vintage Ken dolls. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Last week I gave you a few tips and pointers on sewing a collar for Ken’s View 2 long-sleeved shirt, in the Advance 2899 doll clothes sewing pattern. This is a vintage sewing pattern from 1962, and I’m really enjoying sewing with it!

This week, I’m going to talk about how to sew on a patch pocket, like the pocket you see on my Ken doll’s left breast, on the white shirt he’s wearing, in the image above. This is the same shirt as the one we saw last week (the View 2 shirt with a collar and cuffs).

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The text for sewing the pocket on the View 2 long-sleeved shirt from Advance 2899 for vintage Ken dolls reads as follows: Pocket piece E, shirt front, pieces F through G. 15. The pocket will be perfect if we press the seam all around and hem in place first. Make a small fold under on the wrong side... at the top edge, just wide enough to tuck in the ragged threads and press it. Turn the bottom and side seam allowances under and press. Turn the top... or hem edge... under on fold line and press. 16. Pin the pocket directly over the dotted pocket outline on the left shirt front... Piece F and stitch it into place. Images show piece E with all 4 sides pressed in; piece E with an additional fold at the top of the pocket; and the pocket E sewn onto shirt piece F prior to attaching shirt piece F to the yoke. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

In the image above, you can see the instructions from the original Advance 2899 doll clothes pattern. It suggests double-folding and just pressing the top part of the pocket without ever stitching that top part of the pocket.

However, if you follow this blog regularly, it probably won’t surprise you that I didn’t follow the directions as they are written. I’m known for making a lot of alterations!

In the earliest stage — when cutting the pattern out — I almost didn’t use the pattern they gave me because I could see that this pattern wasn’t big enough to provide a lining for the pocket, which is typically my preference. (To see how I design my own pockets with a simple lining, please visit this page.)

Figure 1 shows a square pocket that has been hemmed at the top and sewn on along three sides. Figure 2 shows a pocket that has been pressed at the top but not hemmed at the top, and three sides have been stitched. Figure 3 shows a photo of the Ken pocket after it has been attached to the left shirt piece, but the threads are white, like the pocket, so it's hard to see the stitch lines. Figure 4 has stitches showing where the pockets folds have been stitched down, plus a whipstitch that attaches the pocket to the shirt on three sides. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

In the image above, Figure 1 shows how most people do a hem stitch to the pressed area at the top of the pocket. Figure 2 is how my own pockets are designed, having a fold at the top (where you fold the pocket in half to create a lining).

So for this Advance 2899 View 2 shirt pocket, I stuck with the original pattern, but instead of only pressing it before sewing around it, I stitched the top fold down first; that’s represented by the green stitches in Figure 4. Then I stitched the other folded flaps down, which is represented by the black stitches in Figure 4.

And finally, once all my folded-in sides had been stitched in place, I whipstitched around the two sides and the bottom of the pocket, attaching it to the shirt as a final step, which is represented in Figure 4 by the pink or red stitch marks.

A Ken doll has an unfinished shirt attached to him with just a straight pin, holding the shirt closed in front. The sleeves flap loosely at this sides like wings, as the inseams have not been sewn from the cuffs to the underarms and then from the underarms to the bottom of the shirt. The patch pocket clearly appears on Ken's left breast in a perfectly square and upright position against the shirt. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Also, the Advance 2899 pattern‘s instructions suggest applying the pocket before stitching the shirt front to the yoke and back, but I actually added my pocket after I had attached the shirt front to the shirt’s yoke and back.

Once it was largely put together (but before I sewed the side seams), I also pinned my shirt to the doll (see image above) to make sure I really had the pocket on straight. If you wait until you’ve finished the shirt’s side seams, it’s a lot trickier to unpick/seam-rip that patch pocket and pull it off of there to re-position it.

I did all of my stitches using a matching white thread, of course, so they’re more or less invisible. That’s why you can’t see my stitches at all on the pocket itself, as a final product.

We see a vintage 1960 Ken doll wearing a handmade shirt with a patch pocket. His painted-on hair is blond. His eyebrows are brown. His eyes are blue. His shirt is white with long sleeves that end in a cuff and a collar. He wears matching white pants underneath, but we only see him from the hip up, as our focus is meant to be on the patch style pocket that has been shown onto his left breast area of the white cotton shirt. — Please visit ChellyWood.com for free printable PDF sewing patterns and tutorial videos for making doll clothes to fit dolls of many shapes and all different sizes.

Even though there was a lot of stitching involved, I think it really looks nice on the doll, and I think the extra stitches I gave to the folds will prevent fraying over time with heavy play and/or dressing-and-undressing.

If I ever make this shirt again, though, I think I will cut the Advance 2899 shirt pocket pattern on the fold, to create that cleaner, less stitch-heavy patch pocket that I typically create for my own doll clothes patterns.

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