The 11th Doctor’s “scales” waistcoat (usually) had four welt pockets: an upper and lower pocket on each side.
Both sets of pockets slanted upward away from center.
Although pocket welts are sometimes cut on the crossgrain, the pocket welts on the “scales” waistcoat were cut on the straight grain (i.e. with the “scales” going in the same direction as the rest of the waistcoat front).
I found no visible evidence of any topstitching around the pocket welts, indicating that they were hand-sewn along the side edges.
The precise positioning of the pocket welts may have slightly varied, but the lower centermost corners of the lower pocket welts were slightly higher than the second-lowest button.
In fact, using the “scales” as a guide, we can see that the pocket welt was positioned approximately ½” higher than the second-lowest button (measured from the buttonhole).
Although the lower front edge seems to have been cut on a slight curve and the pocket welts on straight lines, the lower pocket welts appear to have been angled approximately parallel to the lower front edges.
The upper pocket welts appeared to be angled parallel to the lower pocket welts, although the upper welts were smaller than the lower ones.
The precise positioning of the upper pocket welts may have varied slightly; at least, I had a difficult time ascertaining where, exactly, they were positioned.
Using the fabric “scales” for reference, the centermost upper corners of the upper pocket welts sometimes appeared to be level with the top buttonhole.
More often, though, the centermost upper corners of the upper pocket welts seemed to be positioned below the top buttonhole … although again, the specific distance appeared to vary.
Sometimes it appeared to be a mere ¼” or so beneath the top button.
Other times, though, that centermost upper corner of the upper pocket welt was noticeably lower than the top buttonhole.
In fact, it seems that sometimes the vertical placement of the upper pocket welts wasn’t even symmetrical!
An unfortunate (albeit somewhat amusing) continuity error with the “scales” waistcoat is that, for some reason, it didn’t always have all four pockets.
Specifically, the upper right pocket was sometimes missing.
While it’s true that many waistcoats don’t have all four pockets, it’s also true that they don’t typically go appearing and disappearing again on the same waistcoat over the course of an hour or two!
At the beginning of the episode, “Journey to the Center of the TARDIS,” the Doctor’s waistcoat only had three pockets; there was no upper-right pocket.
However, after the TARDIS was “salvaged” and the Doctor was outside of the TARDIS, his waistcoat suddenly had four pockets!
His waistcoat continued to have all four pockets throughout the entire adventure inside the TARDIS.
But then, at the end of the episode, the upper right pocket magically disappeared again!
This is probably because the “normal” TARDIS scenes bookending the episode were filmed on the same day (or at least closely together), with the “meat” of the episode filmed at different points of the costumes’ production rotation.
Doctor Who has a built-in defense against continuity errors, though, especially during interior TARDIS scenes; during this episode in particular, there was all sorts of “timey wimey” stuff going on!
(And you might remember how the 10th Doctor’s suits would inexplicably switch versions during episodes, and even scenes.)
The “scales” waistcoat briefly seen near the beginning of “The Time of the Doctor” lacked the fourth, upper right pocket as well.
