Skip navigation

Tag Archives: sewing

Swap: Tea Wallet

A very loud tea wallet.

Ta da!  It’s time for a craft!  I made this tea wallet a few weeks ago for a swap on Swap-bot, in which you make a tea wallet, similar to what you see above, and send your partner some tea along with it.  Well, I thought this would be an excellent time to use all this Powerpuff Girls cloth that someone had given to me while I was in college…because they felt that I could find some use for it?  I didn’t even sew back then.  I don’t know why they thought I would be a good candidate for this cloth.  I also don’t like pink.  All around strange.  But anyway, I’ve had it in my pile of scrap cloth this whole time and I’ve finally found away to get rid of some of it!  Huzzah!

Also, I thought a tea wallet is an interesting idea and useful if you’re a big tea drinker (I am probably a moderate tea drinker).  Now you can cart your favorite teas around without them getting all squished in your bag and whatnot.

To make the tea wallet, I modified what I found in this tutorial by Red Linc Crafts for less sewing and less material.

Materials:

PPG!

  • 11″ x 6.5″ piece of cloth (this will be the base)
  • 4.5″ x 6.5″ piece of cloth (this will be the pocket)
  • 3″ of ribbon or cord (I used Chinese knotting string because I have an overabundance of it)
  • a largish button
  • the zipper foot to your sewing machine (optional)

Procedure:

  1. Fold the 4.5″ x 6.5″ piece of cloth in half endwise with the right sides facing together and sew along the bottom edge.  I allowed for 1/4″ seam.  Flip the tube inside out and iron it flat.
  2. Place the tube on your base cloth about 1.5″ from the top edge with the right sides facing together.  Pin and sew across the bottom edge of the pocket.  I allowed for about a 1/4″ seam again.

  3. Cut about 3″ of your ribbon (or whatever) and pin a loop facing inward on the right side of the base cloth, about midway on the pocket. I forgot to get a picture of this, but you can see where I put the loop in the finished product.
  4. Fold the base cloth in half lengthwise with the right sides facing together and pin.  Sew around the edges, but make sure to leave the last 2″ open so you can flip it inside out.  I allowed for a 1/8″ seam this time.  This cloth doesn’t really fray.  If you’re using cloth with a loose weave and will fray, you may still want to use a 1/4″ seam.  There should still be plenty of room for the teabags with the larger seam allowance.

    You can see the stub of where my string is pinned in this picture.

  5. Flip and iron.  If you used a larger seam allowance, you may want to snip the top corners of the wallet so that you don’t get a bulge there from the excess cloth.  When ironing, iron the open edges inside as if they were sewn in.  It’ll be taken care of with the bottom pocket.
  6. Fold about 2″ of the bottom edge up, pin, and sew down the edges.  I didn’t use the zipper foot here and I kind of regret that.  With a zipper foot, you can get much closer to the edge of the wallet and the seams would have looked neater.  I used the zipper foot previously here.   If you’re hand sewing, I guess it doesn’t really matter.  However, when you’re sewing, make sure those open edges are tucked in and are getting sewn down.
  7. Fold the wallet in half and iron a good crease into the center to use as a guide to sew the center line.  Now you have four pockets!  And you didn’t have to bother drawing a center line and making sure it was covered by the thread.  Huzzah!  You can see in the picture above where that crease is.
  8. Fold the wallet in half again, place the button and sew it in.  I hand sewed the button in place.  It made a lot more sense to do it that way.
  9. Stuff with tea!

Next time, I think I’ll try a version with Velcro.  Because I have a lot of that too.  Oh, and the one my swap partner sent me was made with this very interesting cloth with galaxies all over it.  It was quite nice.  And she sent me the most fragrant jasmine green tea.

Enough room to hold a whole year’s worth of laundry…

Remember this?

Well, now you get to see what it was for.

Starting two years ago, I’ve been giving the most biggest, ginormous, hugest, and EMBARRASSING laundry bags to my graduating seniors (I help care for a bunch of jr. high and high school kids in my church group, I’m a counselor of sorts).  The laundry bag part has to do with the fact that I believe that gifts should be useful.  The fact that they are big, ginormous, and huge really has it’s roots in that it’s less fabric I need to cut and that I can use the whole width of the cloth, which also cuts down on the amount of scrap I have leftover.  The fact that EMBARRASSING has to do with…well, because it’s me. Of course I’m going to make them strange and even EMBARRASSING.

Perhaps you’re wondering how embarrassing they could possibly be.  I mean, really?  Embarrassing to the point of being EMBARRASSING?  Well, I’d like to think so and you can judge for yourself in a moment.  They may not really be EMBARRASSING to the point where the kids hide it in the room they leave behind at home and the laundry bag never sees the light of day again.  Actually, from what I’ve heard, a good number of them actually use their laundry bags as…laundry bags.  Huzzah!  Useful!

Anyway, that large circle I posted the tutorial for is how I make the bottoms of the bags (ok, sometimes with a template too, if I can find it).  There’s really only one right now that does not follow the standard cylindrical bag shape, but I did have to make three of them.  Um…it’s a long story.  You can ask me about I if you want.

So, without further ado, I present you the biggest, ginormous, hugest, and EMBARRASSING laundry bags! CLICKY!