Pants and shorts pockets are usually either straight flat across the bottom, or in some sort of bottom of a circle kind of curve. Why is that? Have you ever thought about that?

I hadn’t until recently, but when I did, I saw no good reasons for it. I didn’t see any bad reasons for it, either. However, I saw better reasons for why pants and shorts pockets didn’t have to be flat nor curved at the bottom.

Pockets need to be more durable than the stuff you usually see made. Change and things are always wearing out holes or ripping the bottom seam of many pants and shorts pockets. If you made those pockets with a curved bottom, you can’t serge the bottom very well with all the tight curvature, so that eliminates them from my repertoire.

You can serge the flat bottom pockets, and a serged seam there, as well as the straight vertical seam, will make for very strong seamed pockets. Double the thin fabric layer if you want to minimize holes wearing through.

That’s all great, but what if you’re carrying multiple items that don’t pack well together in the same pocket? Maybe like wallets, keys and/or change, among other things. Have you ever noticed how they sat in your pocket? Usually with the small stuff that is able to fall to the bottom being there, left, right or centre, and the large stuff on top, like your wallet. It’s not all that comfortable, and the heavy stuff on top pushes the edgy stuff on the bottom (keys, change) to wear your pocket bottoms faster. Sometimes, they end up in the least comfortable spaces, like in the middle or inside corners of the pocket that can cause chafing or dig into your skin. So how can you fix this, I thought?

What I came up with was a slanted bottom pocket, slanting towards the outside leg where the pants aren’t so tight against your thighs as they are on the inside and middle. When you put in your wallet, it will only go down so far as its width allows for against that slanted bottom. It will also generally slide towards the outside front.

If you carry keys or change, they will roll to the outside front bottom, into the little triangular area left if you have a wallet on top. Each thing has its own space, in other words. Further, the bottom outside corner of the pocket is where it is strongest as two serged seams converge there. Just want you want to have to guard against pocket wear and tear from change and keys. A wallet sitting in this pocket will have one corner on the seam instead of two for curved pockets, or entire bottom in flat pockets. However, wallet corners aren’t very coarse to be wearing a lot into your pocket, nor putting a lot of pressure as they are soft and will collapse rather than be a sharp pointy edge like keys.

From now on, I’ll only be making slanted pants and shorts pockets after whipping up this design. I’m sure some people have thought of it in sewing, but I’ve never seen it in any clothing I’ve ever had through the years. Why it’s not widely used, I’m not sure, but it’s a lot better than those traditional designs. If you like your tradition, then keep at it.

Otherwise, question everything! Every now and then, you’ll be well rewarded for it!