So I love making handmade gifts, but it isn't easy to sew stuff for the guys in my life. I wanted to make something special for my dad and use my embroidery machine. He's bringing my daughter on a really special fishing trip this summer, so I started thinking about making a fishing vest. I happened upon fly fishing wallets and remembered my dad keeping flies in them when I was a kid, so I decided to make a couple myself.
These are often very expensive and made from leather and lamb's wool. I wanted to use up some of my stash, so I just grabbed some brown faux fur left over from a costume and a heavy brown cotton. The basic shape is 5"x11".
I embroidered the free trout design and the monogram (using the stitches on my machine) onto the fabric first. So, I cut a much bigger piece of cotton than I needed. I trimmed it down to size after embroidering the design so that I could have it centered the way I wanted. You can just use printed fabric and skip the embroidery or hand-embroider if you don't have a machine. I cut 1 piece wooly faux fur 5"x11" and 1 piece cotton 5"x11"
Next, I pinned them together RIGHT SIDES together.
In all honesty, I didn't even bother to pin it, but let's pretend I did. Then, I stitched around the wallet with a 3/8" seam allowance, leaving a 2" opening in the bottom of the wallet to turn. You can see that I also clipped off the corners. This makes for a pointier corner when you turn the fabric because there is less bulk. Before you stitch it up, you could add a little loop of para cord or ribbon to hold this onto a belt. I didn't bother because my dad would never wear this on a belt. He'll just shove it in his fishing vest pocket.
I turned the wallet through the opening and pressed it. Then, I top stitched the wallet. This also closes the little opening you left to turn the wallet.
Now you need to put on snaps or velcro. I used velcro because it's cheap and I already had it in my studio. I can't find my heavy snap setter anywhere, so I'm temporarily not using snaps. They would look really nice on this project though. I just cut velcro into 1" squares.
Pin the velcro into the outer corners of the wallet. Line up the other two pieces as shown in the photo so there is overlap when you close the wallet. I pin them all in place.
Stitch down the velcro. I use an X stitching to make sure it stays in place. It got a little knotty here, but after a nice trimming, it will look just fine.
The wallet folds up nicely and closes easily with the velcro. It took about 10 minutes to sew these, excluding the embroidery.
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