wallet

This year for my niece’s birthday I decided to make her a wallet.
She is at that age where she is growing like a weed and I was scared if I made her clothing she would grow out of it before her birthday. Generally I get her measurements 4 to 6 weeks before her birthday so I have plenty of time to make something. I do try to gauge the amount she may grow and often go up a size so she can wear it all year, but this year I wasn’t even sure going up a size would work, she is growing that fast! And so began the process of trying to come up with something that was not a stuffed animal since that’s what I gave her last year.

I brainstormed with my sister and some friends, everyone had ideas; purses being one everyone suggested. However she already has a lot of purses so I wasn’t into that idea, but the wallet now that sounded like a good idea. Not only did she not have one, my niece is bad to shove her money in her purse and it gets waded up and mixed into everything else she has in there, causing long waits while she paid for her things. Purses are hard enough to keep organized she needed a wallet.

And so I began the task of trying to find a pattern. I browsed the internet for hours trying to find something. But everything I came across either was too bulky or too small. I knew from talking to her about wallets a while ago that she didn’t like clutch wallets, She told me she likes the folding wallets because they take up less room in a purse. So that took out most of the ones I found, And most of the folding were either not big enough to put a dollar without folding the money first, or they were too tall, which in America all of our paper money is the same size so the taller wallets tend to feel awkward. I also wanted something with card holders for her library card and in case she gets gift cards. Card holders were not on most of them. I also wanted the wallet to have a coin purse built in but that was only on one pattern I found. basically I wanted this wallet to have it all and I couldn’t find anything like that.

And so I decided to see if I could copy my wallet which has all those things. I thought I had a good chance of figuring it out as it’s all squares and rectangles and so I began measuring and studying.
Here is what I learned.
Wallets are not easy.
They’re a lot of tiny pieces and getting them put together in the correct order without instructions is hard. You need a slick interior for the card pockets or the cards stick.
The outer part of the wallet has to be slightly bigger then the interior so it can fold. Yeah I had to recut a few pieces to make it work.


I made me a pattern and began the cutting. Realizing as I sewed I had not figured the number of pieces exactly right and ended up having to cut out some more. Good thing I had extra fabric.
I had a really hard time figuring out how to put the coin purse into the wallet and truthfully I have no idea how I did it. It took a lot of tearing apart and putting it back till it worked. I still kinda wonder how I did it, not enough to try again though.
I tried to make the interior of the wallet have more of the outer fabric by making the card pockets out of the outer fabric, but that is how I figured out the cards would stick. I only made one part of the card pockets and was making sure a card would fit before I made the rest when I realized the fabric wouldn’t work. I am so glad I tried it before I made the entire wallet, because that would have made me cry.

I am not sure what type of fabric the lining fabric is. It’s kind of like a plastic-y cotton. It’s not an oil cloth or anything like that and I am not sure where I got it. I just had a misshapen chunk of it in my stash; I think someone gave it to me when I was asking the other seamstresses I know for small scraps for my hexagon quilt that I have been working on for years and am still working on.

It may be a piece of blackout lining but it doesn’t really feel like that either I just don’t know.
The outer fabric is obi fabric from Japan. This fabric was given to me by someone who was clearing out. The fabric was still wrapped in the paper and had the receipt from Japan in it. I thought it was absolutely beautiful fabric and there was about half a yard so not enough to make anything big, but plenty to make a wallet. I used a gold thread to sew most of it together I thought it would be pretty and I had some on hand. The amount of layers in a wallet though was more then I realized and the corners were a bit tough to get through, I managed though I had to use white thread on the thickest parts because the gold kept breaking. I also changed the zipper pull to a gold pull to bring it all together and I thought it looked snazzy.

I really like the way the wallet turned out. As hard as it was to make I am proud of it. The only thing I wish I had done better at was putting the snaps in, they ended up a bit crooked, but hey once they are in they are in and they work so it’s fine.

My niece’s birthday was few months ago, and she was thrilled with her gift, I was hoping I would get to take her out shopping at some point, she is so busy during the school year I thought maybe during her spring break, but as anyone reading this knows that didn’t happen, spring break didn’t really happen. It was more like a spring hide away. I don’t even know when I will get to see my niece again and that makes me sad. She is at an age where she is changing so much and growing into herself that missing even a few months is heart breaking. I know eventually we will all get together again and she will probably be as tall as I am. It’s just hard to live only a few miles apart and feel so far away. Skype is just not the same. I hope though that even through all this we will stay close and keep up some of the traditions we have had over the year. One of my favorites is our annual Christmas photoshoot. We always make a day of it and go out to eat somewhere we have never eaten. Then her parents and all her grandparents get a card of the shoot. I wonder if things will be back by then. Writing this is making me tear up…

I don’t want to end this on a sad not though so I am going to share a cute story about going out with my niece last year.
We had gone out for a day of fun and I had to stick to a very strict budget bringing only what I could spend so ensure I wouldn’t go over budget (this is when my kitty was sick so there were lots of vet bills). We had been out all day and were still an hour from home and not really ready to go home because we were having fun just hanging out. But we were all hungry. I only had two dollars left, my sister had some change and my niece had maybe six dollars total in both wadded up bills and lose change. she dumped out every bit of her purse on the seat of the car to count what she had. I was just going to go home but my niece was like “we can put all our money together and get McDonalds its cheap!” I was unsure about using her money and told her I didn’t want to spend her money she is just a kid so it’s not up to her to feed me. But she told me that since I always buy her food she wanted to help me buy mine and she could definitely buy her own. . In the end we spent about eight dollars most of which she paid for. I thought it was so generous of her to spend her allowance on getting us food. She is so sweet. And we had a blast eating out and joking about her paying. Funny thing is I don’t even remember what we got. But that doesn’t matter what matters is we had a good time, and that really made me realize yeah the kid needed a wallet.