Mini Wallet

I have recently added the link to a mini wallet I want to make to my project page but since then, I have found a different wallet with more pockets that seemed cute. It became our Sunday project for this week. I still plan on making the other one but just to be clear, it's not the one on my project page.

I actually made two of this wallet because I had picked out my fabric to match a new wristlet that I was hoping to use it in but I misunderstood the way the fabrics were titled. This was the tutorial I used. To be clear, the main body fabric is actually your inside pocket color and the pockets are actually the outside main color. I was really disappointed with my first one when I realized this was the case. Luckily, I had enough fabric left over to do another one (it doesn't take that much fabric but my fabrics were all smaller than fat quarters before I did the first one).

Another important thing to note is she makes a huge deal about making sure everything is exact. This made me really scared to do it because I would consider myself a beginner. It turns out, it's not any more important than for any other project. It's always a good idea to make your seam allowances and cutting size as exact as you can be. So if this is your hold up with the project, don't worry about it unless you are really really really a beginner and can't sew in a straight line yet.

We used an interfacing that was thinner than what she called for (I'm sorry I don't know what it was. My mother in law provided that for me.) and we were happy with the stiffness of the wallet. It might've been too thick and harder to turn out if we had gone with the original suggestion. We also skipped the top stitching on the flap because we didn't deem it necessary and to me, top stitching is just annoying unless you plan on washing it.

The hardest part was sewing around the top of the inside when you have the whole thing pieced together (she says it's tricky too). If the wallet was bigger, it would've been nice to use the cuff feature on your machine (where you can wrap it around the body of the machine) but this wallet was too small for the machine we were using. So good luck with this step! It was do-able but I have never worked on anything this small before.

I also (but my mother in law didn't) back-stitched after we tore out that part of the seam to pull the wallet through. I don't know how she did it without back-stitching at the gap but I definitely would've had my stitches come out.

So in general, this tutorial was not written the way I would have done so but it's a very cute little wallet and worth making! I think the hardest part was the snaps. We did this with a tool, rather than the kind you sew on and neither of us had ever done that before. We actually did it wrong two or three times before we finally got it right!

This is the front of the wallet closed. My snap is a little tight on this wallet (hence the puckering around it) but my other one (which was the wrong colored one) turned out better. So to be clear, my gray fabric is actually what the tutorial calls the pocket fabric.

This is the back. Between the gray and the yellow fabric is a pocket. This is one the tutorial suggests using for coins but we didn't want to deal with the hassle of the velcro after our snap fiasco. The yellow fabric is the main body fabric (according to the tutorial).

This is the open wallet. I did struggle on sewing this one a little more than my first one so my yellow fabric is a bit puckered but it didn't seem worth it to me to resew that seam, especially because it's typically under the flap. There is a pocket between the yellow and gray (that I would've sewn the bottom of because you could technically have things slip from this pocket to your back pocket). There is another pocket that is technically between two yellow fabrics but for this picture's sake, it's behind the yellow you can see.

Isn't this a cute wallet? Three little pockets that would be perfect for cards, cash, band aids, hair ties, applicator-less tampons or liners, etc!