Well I have to say I normally find my inspiration for projects on other peoples blogs or on stumbleupon and this one is no exception. I came across a lovely tutorial on Blue Cricket Design but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be there anymore. But there was also this other tutorial on ‘my so called green life’. So I decided make my own, but slightly differently.
I’m not a very experienced at sewing so I thought it would be easier to use bias binding on my card holder.
Cut yourself two pieces of fabric, one for the outer fabric and one for the inside fabric.
Cut another rectangle of the same size from interfacing, I used an iron on interfacing as I thought it would be easiest, and iron this to the outer material.
Then sew the inside material to the back of this interfaced material, I used a simple straight stitch. This is the the main construction of the card holder.
Now for the pockets!
Cut two pieces of fabric (I used curtain liner as I had some lying around and it was a nice weight – try to make sure it’s not stretchy, otherwise your pockets might grow and end up not being able to keep your cards in)
The pockets should be 4.5″ long and approx 2″ wide. Fold and iron the long side over twice to get a nice edge for hemming.
Then hem them nicely along the edge. This will show on the finished card holder, so make sure to use a thread that blends with the fabric. (Or contrasts it if you go for that…)
Then it’s time to overlay the pockets on the outer fabric, I used a card as a guide for the sizing to make sure that I didn’t end up binding it and then finding it was the wrong size. That would be annoying to find out that my cards slip out.
Pin the pockets into place and sew around the edges.
Then the binding… I kind of cheated a little bit with this. In order to finish the edges neatly I used bias binding tape, but instead of applying it the correct way (which I haven’t quite worked out) I decided to simply pin it and stitch and hope.
And when I said pinned it in place… actually hair grips. But they worked really effectively!
Sew it around the binding. To make it look all pretty. I probably made a slight mistake in sewing it with the pockets up when actually the side that is visible most is the outer, but oh well, the stitching turned out okay on both sides.
Tada the finished card holder! I decided not to put any clasp on it because the stiffening of the inside actually kept its shape pretty well and after a couple of closes it stayed shut. =)
Also the pattern used here is from IKEA (totally love their fabrics)
I did also make some others from other fabrics (one for my sister who uses it everyday and another for my friend) but I can’t seem to find pictures of them. Hmmm if I find them I’ll add them in.
Have you tried making a card holder? Any other tips of tricks?
Nikki
Hehe, The two cards used to make this exemplify us completely, IKEA and Costa 😀
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