Monday, February 9, 2009

Easy Pocket Wallet Tutorial


OK, here we go! I had a request from a reader to produce a tutorial for the Easy Pocket Wallet that I posted about last month. I've never made a tutorial but I use them a lot, so I'm pretty familiar. You may doubt that after reading through this one, but I have used lots of them, I swear! Hopefully, this little tutorial will be as easy to figure out as the wallets are to make, really a cinch!

The first thing you need are 4 pieces of fabric measuring 3 1/2" x 4 1/2" in a fun print. Also, I like to iron my fabric before working with it, but I did not include this step in the pictures.


Put two of the pieces of fabric right sides together as seen in the photo. Do the same with the other two pieces of fabric.


Using a 1/4" seam allowance sew around 3 sides of one pair of fabric (below left). I like to also turn the corners on the fourth side to guide me in a later step, but this is unnecessary. The other pair of fabric pieces will eventually be the top of the wallet and so needs a diagonal (below right). I just eyeball what looks good on one of the shorter sides but for your convenience I have measured this one out. You can see the pencil marks on the photo below. The diagonal begins at 1 1/4" from the left and ends 1 1/4" down from the top right corner.



At this point you want to trim any excess fabric from the diagonal and trim the corners (see below right).


Now turn both pieces inside-out. Use a blunt pointed object to push out the corners, I like bamboo knitting needles from this (see above left).

Once your pieces are turned right-sides out, turn in the open ends and pin them closed.


Stitch around each side of the pieces with a 1/8" seam allowance. For my sewing foot, this is measured as the inside of the right hand guide, see pic below.


Now you should have two pieces like the ones below with even top stitching all the way around them.


Place the top piece (the one with the diagonal) on top of the bottom piece and stitch 3 sides together (left, bottom, and right in picture above) using the same 1/8" seam allowance as the previous step. You will be stitching over your top stitching. Trim any fly-away threads and you're done!

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