This past May, my wife and I were traveling, and met up with some friends who moved abroad. While we were hanging out at our hotel room, much to my chagrin, a large tear in my pants was pointed out to me. This was deeply disappointing, but when life gives you lemons...

For a while, I'd been wanting to add a "hidden" pocket to a sling that I often take with me to aura farm on hikes. I normally keep my wallet in the outermost compartment (pictured below), and I always think about how easy it would be for someone to steal it. The main idea was to stitch the back pocket from the pants into the inside backing of the backpack, then cut an opening to make the pocket accessible from the outside with a zipper. This way, the opening is usually against my back, and it's easy to rotate a sling around and access the contents, but relatively difficult for someone to slip their hand between my body and the bag without me noticing. In my opinion, The back pocket from an old pair of jeans is the ideal candidate for this project for multiple reasons. First, denim is quite durable and as someone who doesn't know what I'm doing here, I like the appeal of starting with something that's already stitched into a sturdy pocket. Second, back pockets are a really nice size - perfect for storing everyday items that you wouldn't want to lose like phones, keys, and wallets.

Anyway, it's been a couple months and I really like it! To cleanup the ends where I cut through the back of the bag, and generally add a bit of flair, I used some scrap fabric from an old bedsheet to line the outside of the pocket. The stitching had to be redone a couple times as some light use was enough to point out the flaws in my original attempt, but I think I've gotten a lot better at it now! Originally, I wanted to reuse the zipper/button from the pants to secure the pocket, but it wouldn't have opened wide enough to comfortably slip my wallet and/or phone through. I've attached some photos below so you can see my process and the end result!

I've toyed around with the idea of also making the pocket accessible from the main compartment, maybe with another zipper, but so far that hasn't seemed worth the trouble. Thanks for reading!