Old Fools Kilts: Oh How I Love Pockets

Sporrans

Purses, sporrans*, backpacks, handbags, shoulder bags, dirtbags, butt bags and paper sacks are used to carry your stuff. I have used them all but there is nothing like a pocket for the small stuff.  For instance, I carry a pocket knife all the time except when I sleep or shower.  It is, like fingernails, a primary tool and I use it multiple times daily.  If I could have one of my fingers modified to be a jackknife I would certainly look into it.  One of the big problems with the nudist camp is there was no place for my pocket knife or for money for the snack (beer) bar. There was a girl there that just stuck her folding money in the crack of her butt and I suppose I could have done that with my jackknife but I never could make that work for me. She had quite a butt. Sorry no pictures.

* Since the traditional kilt does not have pockets, the sporran serves as a wallet and container for any other necessary personal items. It is essentially a survival of the common European medieval belt-pouch, superseded elsewhere as clothing came to have pockets, but continuing in the Scottish Highlands because of the lack of these accessories in traditional dress. -from Widipedia

This carried over into America with trailblazers calling their sporran a "possibles bag".  -from me

Traditional kilts have no pockets.  The great kilts have bags and folds so I imagine some of those took care of small items.  The baggy leine sleeves probably took care of having  pockets as well. I don't have baggy sleeves and my kilts range from casual to contemporary. Some have pockets and those I have made have added pockets but two of my favorites are casual kilts sold by Stillwater Kilts of Minnesota and they do not.  These are inexpensive lightweight acrylic made in the traditional style. The kilt featured in the first post of this blog is an example. It is a comfortable kilt and easy to care for but has no pockets. I aim to fix that.

I had these pant legs that I cut off last winter when I converted some black khaki pants (BugleBoy) into knickers. SWMBO (she who must be obeyed) likes knickers about the same as she does kilts. Which means she does not. It's not that she does not like them it is that she is embarrassed when I wear them for some reason known only to her. It seems that many wives think kilts (and knickers) are OK on someone else's husband but not hers.  More on that in a later post. Knickers are great for bike riding in the winter and I will post about the making of the knickers (simple) in a later post as well but meanwhile back to kilt pockets.

Sorry about the black on black but if you look closely you see how I did it.

They happened to be the size I wanted so all I had to do was sew the bottom closed, turn down the top to the Levi type pocket I wanted and sew the remainder of the top closed. This could easily have been done by hand but in this case I used my machine.
Pant legs are asymmetrical as one side is bigger than the other. The smaller side should be in so that it still lies flat when loaded with stuff.

Turning the apron back I then safety pinned the pocket to the very bottom of the waist band so that the load would be carried by the waist band. I tried it and made a few adjustments to the position before sewing it on. The reason for the safety pins is I wanted to overloaded the pockets to see if this was really going to work. Pockets always get overloaded sooner or later and I do not want surprises later.
These pockets are large but that was not to make them carry more stuff but so the stuff could be spread out and not bulk up.

After the final sewing and some ironing the front apron covers the pocket. With the amount of belly fat that I presently have the kilt hangs properly and there is no evidence that there is a pocket there full of money (I wish). It is as easily accessed as any pants pocket.

I do not know how it will look when/if I lose this belly fat but since I only lose about 30 grams a month that is not an immediate problem.

George Carlin pointed out that everybody else's possessions are called shit as in "their shit" but yours is stuff as in "my stuff".  I have way too much stuff which is really shit.