Card Pocket for Little Cards

Business cards, gift cards, loyalty cards- they all need a place to go!

With the holidays usually comes an influx of gift cards. How about a cute way to contain them in your bag, along with all those loyalty cards and business cards that accumulate? Here’s a truly easy and fast little pocket tutorial to help you out. It also makes a simple way to present a merchandise card you’re gifting to someone. Made of felt, there’s no need to line it, and you can even use a bit of a felted sweater or felted fabric. Add a couple buttons from the bottom of the button box (they don’t even need to match) and a bit of cording or string, and you’re ready to get started.

If you’re lucky enough to have in hand one of my fold-over business cards, use it as a pattern to help you cut the felt and find the right place for the bottom button.

Here we go!

Materials

• a piece of felt at least 4″ by 9″. You can use purchased felt or it’s especially cute to use a felted sweater or fabric you’ve felted yourself

• two buttons – mine were about 5/8″ in diameter. They don’t have to match, be creative!

• a piece of thin cording, string, pearl cotton, etc, cut to 9″ long

• matching thread and a sewing machine (although you’re welcome to sew it by hand as well. A blanket stitch would be beautiful)

Instructions

1. Cut a rectangle from the felt, 3½” wide and 9” long. If you have my business card, you can use it as a pattern by folding the felt in half, placing the unfolded card on top of the felt so the fold line marked on the card is about ½” away from the folded edge of the felt. Cut around the card leaving the fold of the felt in place. That should give you a rectangle that is 3½” wide and 9” long.

Stitching Large Rolled Hems

For the rehearsal dinner I’m hosting next month (see this post), I have a thirty foot table runner to hem, along with 30 napkins and 30 chair covers. That’s a lot of hemming. I decided to use a wide rolled hem attachment I have for my Viking; it gives me a 1/2″wide hem that’s durable and attractive. It works on the same principle as the narrow hem feet that are fairly common, but it’s, well, wider. I think these attachments should be more common than they are, because I find lots of uses for mine, like napkins, where a narrow hem wouldn’t be pretty or durable enough. Here’s a couple hints I learned to get consistently good results:

Here’s my attachment. It actually snaps into two holes in the front of my throat plate; I use my regular presser foot with it. You might not be able to use this exact set-up with your machine but I found wide rolled hem presser feet that would work with most machines here or here.

To get a good start on the hem at the beginning of the seam can be tricky, but I found that if you first iron or finger press the first few inches of the hem, you’ll get a nice looking hem. For my hems on crisp cotton, I finger pressed (used my fingers to rub the fold of the fabric) the raw edge toward the wrong side just under 1/2″ then turned it again 1/2″, for about the first 3″ of the hem.

Raise the presser foot, and feed the edge into the hemmer about 4″ from the beginning, then slowly pull the hem back to the beginning, letting the folds you put in the fabric guide you. Now you can lower the presser foot and start sewing and your hem should be nice and even.

The problem with creating hems this wide is it’s hard to judge how much of the fabric edge to feed into the hemmer. When first experimenting, I’d not let enough of the edge curl into the attachment and then I’d have a raw edge showing, or I’d put in too much and get lumps. The solution for me was a little prep work. Before sewing, I draw a line on the back of the cloth 1″ from the edge. That gives me a guide when feeding the fabric into the hemmer. It works well.

Let me know if you have and use a wide rolled hem attachment. I want to know what projects you’ve done with it!

Reuse, Repurpose Notepad Tutorial

Here’s a quick, scrap-busting tutorial for you. I’ve had this idea rolling around in my head for awhile now. You see, in my day job I create print publications, so I generate a lot of scrap paper that’s been run through the printer. As much as possible, I try to print on both sides of the paper before throwing it in the recycle bin, but my pile of half-used paper continues to grow. On the other hand, I never seem to have a piece of paper in my handbag when I need one.

Solution, a little covered notepad that holds quarter sheets of letter-sized paper. And it doesn’t hurt that creating it helped me use up some small scraps of fabric as well!

This super simple project only takes an hour or so to put together, so I made another win with economy of time. Here’s how to whip one up for yourself:

And even though it looks like the pencil pocket is on upside down, it’s done on purpose. The pencil won’t fall out when the cover flap is closed. Clever, eh?

Materials:

Cut from scrap cotton fabric:

5″ by 12.5″ – cut two pieces for cover

5″ by 8.5″ – cut one piece for cardboard stiffener pocket and top gutter to hold paper

2″ squares – cut two pieces to hold bottom corners of paper

2″ by 8″ – cut one piece for a pencil pocket

To stiffen the back so it’s easy to write on, cut two pieces of lightweight cardboard, such as cereal boxes, each 4.25″ by 5.5″.

Directions:

(Excuse my rough drawings, it was sometimes easier to show you by drawing a picture because a photo couldn’t show enough detail.)

Finish one short edge of the pencil pocket, using a zig-zag stitch or a serger.

Press the two long edges of the pencil pocket 1/4″ to the wrong side, then press the top finished edge 1/4″ to the wrong side. Do nothing to the other short edge.

Topstitch the top edge of the pencil pocket.

Press the squares in half diagonally, so they form triangles. Set aside.

With the piece of fabric that’s 5″ by 8.5″, press one short edge first 1/4″ to the wrong side, then another 1 1/4″ to the wrong side.

Stitch close to the folded edge to keep it in place.

Next, press that edge back to the right side 3/4″. This will form an upper “gutter” to hold the paper in place.

To place the pencil pocket in the right place before stitching it down, first lay one of the cover pieces right side up. Lay the cardboard pocket in place on one end and baste it in place with a glue stick. Lay each of the triangle pieces on a bottom corner on top of the cardboard pocket. Baste in place with a glue stick.

Place the pencil pocket diagonally on the upper cover. The bottom of the pocket should just cross the upper right corner. The top of the pocket should end just above the cardboard pocket and stay 1/2″ from the left edge of the cover. See diagram. Baste with a glue stick.

Stitch the two long sides of the pencil pocket to the cover close to their folded edges. The bottom of the pocket will extend beyond the edges of the cover.

Once again lay the cover piece with its pockets right side up. Place the other cover piece on top, right side down. Pin and stitch 1/4″ around all four sides, leaving a 2″ gap along one edge for turning.

I find it easier to get a better looking end result by first opening the seams and pressing them before turning.

Turn right sides out, press, then stitch close to the edges of just the top flap of the notepad.

Tuck the two pieces of cardboard into the large pocket.

Slide scrap paper and a pencil into the holder. Enjoy!

An Exercise in Stash Building

Last weekend was the Rocky Mountain Sew Expo in Denver. I went there to gawk over the booths of fancy sewing machines and hunt down another sashiko embroidery kit.

But the booth that really caught my attention (and my money) was a little unassuming booth called Craft Scraps. The name’s pretty descriptive; they fill their table and shelves with all manner of secondhand crafting temptations that need new homes. There’s scrapbooking, rubber stamping, knitting and crocheting supplies, and of course, fabrics and sewing notions.

I was just going to, you know, window shop… peruse… browse… scan. Shucks, it was a no-go from the get-go. Little bundles of vintage fabrics reached out from the shelves and yanked at my heart. Then it was yarn, then it was buttons. The shop owner finally handed me a basket because stuff kept falling out of my arms. Sigh.

Anyway, one thing I noticed as my pile was growing is that it was a wonderfully color coordinated pile. I must of been feeling orange that day. And turquoise. Now I feel like whatever final form these treasures take on, they’ll have to do it together. I can’t break up a matched set! I’m justifying it all because the prices were so irresistible. $1.10 for wool yarn, $1.35 for buttons, $1- $4 for fabric, who can resist?

Have you ever seen such adorable, sculpted vintage buttons?

Now I don’t know yet what I’ll do with it all- placemats, bags, book covers, pouches, water bottle cozies? But in the meantime I’m digging the vintage color combinations. So to honor the colors, I’ve created a little color storyboard, AKA the blog Color Collective. Enjoy the color goodness with me!

If you live in Colorado and you’d like to find out where you can catch up with the gals of Craft Scraps, they don’t have a website, but you can email them to find out what shows they’ll next be appearing at: craftscraps@comcast.net.