Tea Wallet Tutorial

Today, I'm going to try my hand at writing a tutorial for what I call a Twelve Bag Tea Wallet. A friend asked me to do this at a retreat back in February, but it's taken me until now to collect the photos and write it up.

I will be linking this to Quilt Shop Gal's Creative Goodness Linky Party for this week. If you enjoy these sort of crafty, creative posts, check it out. So many creative ideas!

Now to the job at hand!

Twelve Bag Tea Wallet

Supply List

• Fat Quarter of Cotton Fabric
• Matching Thread
• Button or snap for closure. If using snap, two small pieces of interfacing
• Small hair elastic if desired to use with button
• Marking pen of your choice (I use chalk on dark fabrics and water eraseable on light)
• Usual implements for cutting and pinning and a sewing machine.

Instructions

Make the body of the wallet




Sew along the raw 15 ½” edge, using a ¼” seam to form a tube.

From your fat quarter, cut a rectangle 15 ½” by 20 ½”.

Fold fabric crosswise in half, right sides together; press. The rectangle is now 10 ¼” by 15 ½”

Sew along the raw 15 ½” edge, using a ¼” seam to form a tube.

Open the tube and line up the seam with the crease that is opposite it, so that the seam is in the middle of the rectangle. Press this flat, pressing the seam open, as in the photo. (This is important to avoid excessive thickness on the outside edges of the finished pockets.)

Sew one of the 10 ½” raw edges using a ¼” seam backstitching at the beginning and end..

On the opposite 10 ½” raw edge, mark (or use a pin to mark) 3 ½” from each edge. You will leave the area between the marks open for turning. 

Sew from each edge to the mark, backstitching at the beginning and end of each seam. Clip all corners as in the photo.

Turn the rectangle right side out and press, making sure to make sure all corners are square and the seams are straight. Don’t worry about sewing the opening that you used for turning shut. It will be sewn when we put in the closure.

With the center seam running vertically so you can see it, turn up both short sides by 3 ½”. Press well.

Now take the flaps you just folded up and fold them back outward, matching the edges with the folded edge. Press well. This makes 1 ¾” deep pockets.

Pin the pockets in place so that they don’t slide during the sewing.

Mark a line 3” from the side edges. These marks should be parallel to the center seam. You will sew along this seam to divide the wallet into three sections.

Topstitch along the side edges (parallel to the center seam). Use a ¼” or less seam and backstitch at the beginning and end. (Don’t mark or sew the top and bottom sides.) Go slowly over the thick areas of the pockets. A walking foot is helpful here.Similarly, sew along the lines you marked, backstitching at each end as before.

The body of the wallet is made.

Make the Closure

In the picture at the top of this post, there are 3 options for closing the wallet.

Option 1: Hair elastic and button

Cut a small hair elastic (or a piece of a larger one) so that you can more easily fold it in half. Insert the cut ends into the outside pocket in the top of the wallet body. Topstitch the opening close to the edge, bacstitching over the elastic to reinforce it. Topstitch the  center opening of the opposite edge as well.

Sew a button to the outside of this side (opposite the elastic), being careful not to sew the pocket closed. (Sew only through the outside layer.)

Option 2: Loop and button

Make the loop by cutting a 1 ¼” by 4” strip from the leftover fabric. Fold this in half lengthwise and press. Open the strip and fold the sides into the center fold and press, then fold again down the center and press well, giving you a strip that is ⅜” by 4”.

Fold the strip in half so that it forms a v shape at the point, as shown in the picture. Proceed as for the hair elastic, using this strip instead.

Option 3: Snap

For this option, you will need to cut four flap pieces from your leftover fabric about 4” by 3” and two pieces of interfacing the same size. I used fusible fleece rather than interfacing, because I had it handy. Use whatever, you just need to reinforce the flaps so that they can hold up to snapping and unsnapping the flaps.

The picture to the left is not to scale due to the constraints of my software. Use it to draft your own pattern, but be sure to mark the snap position in the center top area.

To cut the flaps, I stack the fabric right sides together and rotary cut it so that all 4 flaps are the same. Iron (or baste or glue) the interfacing to one of each pair. Install the snap according to package instructions if it’s a magnetic snap, or sew it in if it’s an old-fashioned snap, into the side with the interfacing, measuring and marking carefully to place both of the pieces of the snap so that they will match up.

Once the snap is installed in each pair, put the flaps right side together and sew ¼” around the outside, leaving one side open for turning. Turn right side out and topstitch.

Insert the first flap into the top outside pocket and then sew close to the edge, closing the middle pocket and sewing in the flap.

Second flap attached, but not inserted.

Attach the other side of the snap, then insert the other flap into the opposite (bottom) outside pocket and pin in place. (This is to insure that the snaps will line up.) Unsnap and sew the bottom center section close to the edge to attach the flap and close the outside center pocket.

Second flap inserted and pinned in place ready to sew

To use the wallet, put tea bags and/or sweetener packets as desired into pockets. Fold one side to center, then the other. Fold the bottom up to the top and snap.

Enjoy!

March Entry Quilt Shop Gal FMQ Challenge

It's March (the bitter end - and it's been bitter here... brrr!); time for an entry in Darlene at Quilt Shop Gal's FMQ Challenge.

This month Patsy Thompson was the expert. I love Patsy's beautiful and colorful hyperquilting, so I really didn't want to miss this one. Since I had already bought her Craftsy class and watched it all, I decided to go for Option 2, which was to use the techniques from that class in a quilted pillow.

It has been really cold and dreary here. Spring hasn't really arrived yet, and somehow I just couldn't bring myself to use those bright, beautiful colors. I had done January's challenge in black and white, so I thought I would use a similar color scheme, but this time I'd use a black background and white and gray and metallic gold threads for the high contrast look of hyperquilting. Here is the result.

Finished March Pillow

The center feathered wreath was trapunto done with a thread that dissolves in water, which was new for me, but not too difficult. I simply sewed the extra layer of batting to the quilt top, cut away the excess batting in the back, then layered my usual quilt sandwich. Here are a few photos to illustrate.

The Vanish Lite (soluble thread) goes in the top thread, then sew the outline of the trapunto area.

From the back; trimming away the extra batting. After this, I added the regular layer of batting and a plain muslin backing.

Once I had the complete quilt sandwich, I could quilt as usual, sort of. I haven't been quilting much lately - overstretched my hand and it hurts, but I remembered something I had won in an earlier version of Darlene's FMQ Challenge, a set of Grip and Stitch Disks from Clever Craft Tools. You see, when I used my gloves, I tended to aggravate the sore hand, but resting my hands on the disks kept them in a neutral position that didn't hurt. I need more practice with them to get better control, but they do really grip the fabric, making it slide easily.

Grip and Stitch disks ready for quilting.

I quilted the wreath as usual. I then set about quilting the straight lines in the background. For this, I tried another Patsy Thompson suggestion, a short ruler made for FMQ. It kept my lines pretty straight, until I had to move the ruler. Again, a little practice should improve that. I think I could learn to really like using a ruler as a guide. (Note, this isn't the ruler you use for cutting fabric. It's much thicker so the presser foot can ride up against it as you quilt. See Patsy's website and You Tube videos for more details.)

The clear acrylic tool in the lower left corner is the quilting ruler. This one has handles to make it easier to use.

After I finished the usual quilting, I went back to add the hyperquilting, in my case, extra quilting in the feathers of the wreath. This is just some embellishment to add detail and complexity.

Adding Hyperquilting to the wreath.

After that, I turned it into a pillow, just as I did in January.

I'm going to link this up to the Quilt Shop Gal FMQ March Challenge site. Check it out; so many beautiful pillows this month! Thanks, Darlene and Patsy for the great inspiration. I used a lot of new things this time around that I wouldn't even have known about if it hadn't been for the two of you! You're both the greatest!