A ½-inch hem along the border of a 16-inch piece of canvas. Quite possibly the first step on the road to sewing enlightenment.

A few weeks back I tried to make the case that skill with a sewing machine can save you more money than any other do-it-yourself discipline over a lifetime of sailboat ownership. If you missed that column, now is a good time to read it: Home Sewn.

Sewing skills also allow you to make unique custom enhancements to your current boat, and your next boat, and the one after that—enhancements limited only by your imagination. There is a wise proverb that says, “Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.” In that tradition, I thought there would be value in a companion piece with step-by-step guidance for a specific sewing project.

I first saw a clear multi-pocket bag attached to the inside of the rear door of a workman’s van. His job was assembling window awning frames and at a glance he could locate just the component he needed. It looked like an idea with sea legs to me. I offer it to you here because it is simple enough to be a first project yet complicated enough to provide a sense of accomplishment. Also, because the finished product will likely prove as useful on your boat as it is on ours.

Conceptually, think in terms of a shirt with eight front pockets. Photographers and hunters adapt this idea to the vest. Aboard a boat, the shirt or vest becomes a rectangle of canvas hung in some convenient location—on the inside of a locker door, against the hull in the back of a locker, or on a bulkhead in immediate reach. Making the pockets from clear vinyl lets you see instantly what is in each pocket, a benefit that cannot be overstated.

We could just sew on patch pockets—like on a shirt or the back of jeans—but patch pockets are best for flat items and they are difficult to extract something from. What we want are bin-like pockets, open enough at the top that we can just reach in and grab whatever is in the pocket, even if it is at the bottom. How do we accomplish that? Let’s just do it.

For this project, I suggest that you use my dimensions and end up with a 9-pocket bag that measures 15 x 15, but I will provide the “rules” that will let you configure whatever bag size, pocket size, and pocket configuration that suits your need. Materials required are few. Aside from a sewing machine and thread, you need a piece of any type of canvas 1 inch larger than your finished dimensions—which translates into 16 x 16 for our sample project. You also need half a yard of the thickest clear vinyl roll material you can find. The thicker the vinyl, the more durable it will be.

Start by putting a ½-inch single hem all the way around the 16 x 16 piece of canvas. Single hem simply means the edge is folded over once, giving a finished edge to the front or outside of the project, but with the raw edge of the fabric visible from the back or inside. Simply fold ½-inch of the fabric back onto itself and stitch down the middle of this fold. Do this all the way around the piece of canvas.

Shallow pockets are easier to access than deeper ones, so I have settled on a 4-inch depth for our pockets. This is why the hemmed canvas is 15 inches high. Three stacked 4-inch pockets need a 12-inch backing plus about ¼-inch of seam allowance per row of pockets, and I left 1-inch of canvas at the bottom and a bit more than that at the top for clearance and mounting. The canvas is 15 inches wide because this was the width of the space where I wanted to mount the pockets. We don’t need additional space at the sides, so three equal pockets across means they will each be 5 inches wide.

The only other dimension we need is how wide does the mouth of each pocket open? About 2 inches should give easy access. If we trace the edge of the mouth of each pocket, we want it to come out from the canvas 2 inches, run parallel to the canvas for 5 inches, then turn back in for 2 inches to reconnect with the canvas. Simple addition shows that we need 9 inches of vinyl for a 5-inch wide pocket opening 2 inches. To form a row of three such pockets from a single strip of vinyl means the vinyl needs to be 27 inches long. The width is 4 ¼ inches for 4-inch deep pockets with a bottom seam ¼-inch up from the edge. Thus, for three rows of pockets we need three strips of vinyl 4 ¼ inches wide and 27 inches long.

Marking the canvas for where the vinyl strips and pockets will be located.

Lightly mark vertical pencil lines on the front side of the hemmed canvas, top to bottom, at 5 inches from the edge and 10 inches from the edge. Now mark the vinyl strips into the same number of equal divisions—three of 9 inches in this case. In other words, you have one edge, then a vertical pencil line at 9 inches, a second pencil line at 18 inches, and finally the opposite edge at 27 inches.

OK, let’s stop and take a deep breath. Don’t fade away because of all the numbers. All we have done is hem the perimeter of a piece of canvas and drawn four pencil lines. This is really easy, and you will really thank me later.

Let me throw in one other break in the action. When sewing vinyl, sometimes the presser foot wants to stick to the plastic rather than slide as it should. One easy solution to this is to put tissue paper—the kind used to wrap gifts—over the vinyl while sewing. Tear the paper away after the seam is completed.

Sewing tissue paper over the vinyl helps the presser foot slide. The paper is easily torn away after the seam is completed.

The sewing starts on one edge. Align the end of one of the strips of vinyl flush with the side of the canvas. The long edge of the vinyl should be about 1 inch in from the bottom edge of the canvas. Sew the two together with a row of stitches ¼ inch or a little more in from the edge. Stop before the sewing machine reaches the opposite edge of the vinyl and slide the second vinyl strip in place abutting edge-to-edge with the first one. Continue sewing almost to the opposite edge of the second strip, then stop and slide the third vinyl strip into place, also in alignment with the edge and abutting the second strip. Sew across the third strip and off onto the allowance of canvas beyond the vinyl. Cut the thread and remove the work from the machine. Now rotate it 180 degrees and position the loose end of the first strip of vinyl flush with the side edge of the canvas and the same distance from the top edge as it is on the opposite side where it is already sewn in place. Sew this end to the canvas in the same way as the opposite end, with a row of stitching slightly more than ¼ inch from the edge. Abut the second and third vinyl strips as you complete this seam. What you should end up with is the three strips of vinyl, one against the next, sewn to both side edges of the canvas.

Now we are going to divide the strips into pockets by aligning the pencil marks on the vinyl with those on the canvas and sewing a row of stitching through both. Do this at the 5-inch line on the canvas and at the 10 inch line. When you are finished the vinyl should form sort of a three-hump roller coaster when you lay the canvas flat.

Ta-Da! The finished product, ready for mounting on the inside of a locker, a stowage solution suitable for all types of important boat parts and pieces.

All that remains to make pockets is to close the bottoms. We do this by pleating them. Simply flatten each hump by folding the excess vinyl evenly underneath, then stitch across the bottom edge of the vinyl slightly more than ¼ inch from the edge. Looking at the bottom edge and beginning at the left end of the vinyl, its path is something like this. It goes to the right 1 inch, then folds up and goes to the left 1 inch. It folds up again and goes to the right 5 inches—this is the top of the pocket. Now it folds down and goes to the left one inch, then down again and to the right 2 inches, crossing the between-pocket stitching at 1 inch. Here it folds up and goes back to the left one inch, repeating the sequence for the second pocket, then repeating it again for the third pocket. Pleat and stitch the bottom edge of all three strips.

When you attach the completed bag to a solid surface with fasteners in the four corners you will have created a stowage solution for all manner of loose items that otherwise create clutter. More important, you will have added sewing to your suite of skills. It is a valuable addition.

If you got off track somewhere, you can see this project detailed with more pictures and fewer words in Canvaswork & Sail Repair.