Hand Painted Clutch Wallet

Here's an all-over painted clutch-style, backlit tarp wallet. I designed these to fit my lifestyle because there's all those membership cards, gift cards etc., to manage today. There's even more cards when you have children. The third photo shows the card organizer section. You can fit 10 cards within each partition. The right side is for coins, and there's two long slots for paper money and chequebook. And two window slots for driver's licence and bus pass.

I used WR-LPU marine paint and sanded the tarp. I still had some adhesion problems, perhaps not sanded enough. The paint will peel off in a film if the surface is not rough enough.

It was satisfying getting back to making these wallets again. This one is spoken for, but if you'd like me to make you one,  why not drop me a line at vinally@vinally.ca and I can make you a custom wallet. Wouldn't you just love to have your very own one-of-a-kind wallet that reflects your personality that gets compliments when you pull it out? I sure enjoy mine!

Card slot wallet

Here's another 12-slot folding wallet. Here you can see the pieces as they are now. I make notches so that the slots will align perfectly.  Also so that I can get the upper thread, which is more attractive, onto the outside of the wallet. You can see on this wallet there's one seam that's a bobbin seam, not so attractive.

The other thing that occurred to me is that I can put card slots into other jobs that have extra space. So I can accumulate a bunch of slots in different colors as I am doing other jobs.

Trifold, 12-slot wallet

 This is a prototype for a 12-slot wallet for my iPad art buddy Susan Murtaugh. I have devised a construction method to make the slots line up in perfect parallel configuration. I'm not satisfied with the appearance of the thread in the bobbin. Perhaps the tension or the thread itself needs adjustment. I tried covering up the threads with some adhesive-backed vinyl, but I don't think that's going to work.

What I like about the cut file for this particular design is that it fits nicely on my 12X24" cutting surface.

I'm going to tweak the cut file design so that I can put the good looking threads onto the outside. The industrial machine I have sews nicely, but I need to drive it some more to get used to it, as it, being an industrial machine, is designed to sew very fast.

Update: I change the title of this post to trifold wallet, because that's how they are known in the industry. Even though there are only two folds! 

Man's card-slot wallet construction

I have figured out the mysteries of card slots in wallets! The higher-up slots have fabric "hammocks" to prevent the inserted card from going too far down the pocket and getting lost. The part of the slot that is seen is usually made from leather.

I am using a softer vinyl tarp for this project. The more layers of vinyl, the more the sewing machine tends to balk. At certain points it's two layers of nylon and two layers of vinyl to sew through. That also means that trying to encase a card slot module into a vinyl seam binding, fuggedaboutit! Too many layers. So I am using a glued-down strip of vinyl to hide the side seams.

Update: Tracy Murray gave me some valuable input on how to construct the slots to save some time. I don't have to have the nylon hammocks if I sew the slots down, starting from the back slot and working down to the front. Will try this technique on my next sample. Thanks, Tracy!