Choosing the Material for a Homemade Wallet

Series Summary

The word "wallet" has been in use since the first century A.D. and refers to a bag or a knapsack for carrying your most prized possessions. While wallet can be traced back to the ancient Greeks, the term "wallet" in its modern meaning of "billfold" in American English dates to 1834. Billfolds were developed after the introduction of paper currency to the West in the 1600s and early wallets were made primarily of cow or horse leather and included a small pouch for printed calling cards.

Learn how to create your own personal wallet at home with the help of a professional seamstress. In this free video series, you will learn all the steps to making a wallet including picking and cutting the material, sewing the pieces together, adding personal touches like lace, and using Velcro or a snap to close it all up. Your wallet should reflect your personality so watch this video series and get started on your homemade wallet today!

Video Transcript

"Okay, we are going to learn how to make a wallet today in Misty Swift style because I like to do stuff a little differently. I do not like patterns, so pretty much everything I do, will be winging it, so if that's how you like to do stuff, this will work out great for you! First we need to pick out the material and you want to make sure that it's not too stretchy. I got some samples here. This is beautiful brown velvet, but it's way too stretchy; if you try to use that it's going to get really out of control, you're going to have a hard time handling it and it's going to have problems. Satin is beautiful, but it's not good for handling, so if you're making a wallet, you want something that can be handled that's not going to pick up the oils from your hands. Obviously something like this is going to be too whimsical; this is also too stretchy. You can find materials like this, kind of a faux suede, it's really soft, really pretty, this would work fine, but I would avoid finding anything that is already pieced together for something as small as a wallet because the seams can mess you up and set you off and it can make it look really crooked if you don't have it just right. I would recommend a cotton, linens are good; this is all different kinds of cottons. You have a huge variety. Wallets are fun because you can use novelty patterns and you want to make sure you get something that's washable because wallets do tend to, end up getting spotted. You'll need about a half a yard and you can have two different patterns because that's all you'll need for a wallet is the front and the back and that's pretty much all on the material."