A Sewing Solution for Bunched Up Pockets in Dresses and Skirts

I have a few quick solutions for fixing pockets in ready to wear dresses or skirts! I don’t know if you’ve had the same experience, but whenever I have a dress with side seam pockets, I get super annoyed by how the pockets either wrinkle and bunch up, adding bulk to my hip area, or shift out of place — sometimes I stand up and my pockets have fallen to the back of my dress. It’s annoying to have to always fix my pockets.

I really hate clothing that I constantly have to adjust, so I set aside time to fix the problem of pockets in dresses that won’t lie flat. I came up with a few different solutions for this problem and they only take a few minutes. And now, dresses I avoided wearing because I hated the bunched up pockets, became dresses I’ll reach for all the time.

Watch my latest YouTube video for how I fixed the problem of the bunched up pockets! (And let me know if you have a solution to offer me for that last one).

How to Fix Dress Pockets So They Lie Flat

My two most useful solutions are this: Either top stitch the pockets down, or (gasp) remove the pockets altogether.

Obviously, I don’t prefer to remove pockets, but sometimes that’s just the best solution. One of my problem dresses is made of a crinkle rayon and if you’ve sewn with this fabric, you know that it’s hard to straight stitch on crinkle rayon with warping the fabric. For this reason, I decided to remove them. I cut them off and sewed a new side seam into the dress, just past where the pockets had previously been sewn on. It worked beautifully and the side seam looks flawless.

The other option is great for most fabrics. Obviously, top stitching the pockets to the skirt will result in visible stitching, which is fine on busy prints, and can look like a design feature on solid fabrics. However, if your dress is more formal, or is of satin or silk perhaps, which are prone to puckering, the visible stitching might be undesirable. But for most dresses, this is still my preferred fix! You can see in this floral rayon dress that the stitching completely disappears into this print (of course, make sure you use matching thread!)

If you watch the video, you’ll see that I had trouble with the third dress, since it was lined and I just couldn’t seem to get everything flat enough. My original idea was to stitch to pocket down to the lining, but it just didn’t work. The lining and skirt had gathers and I just couldn’t seem to get it all flat. BUT, a viewer commented and suggested I just tack the pockets to the lining, rather than stitching all the way around and that is really a great solution! I’ll try that for the striped linen dress.

I hope this has been helpful. If you have discovered any other solutions for the fussy pockets problem, please share it! Keep your eyes on my YouTube channel for more videos with various alterations. I go through my mending basket pretty often and alter, remake, resize or repurpose the clothing that lands there. It’s fun to come up with solutions and it’s a fun and free way to add more options to my wearable wardrobe!

Cheers :)

Nikki