My favourite wallet is no longer produced (as far as I can tell), so I decided to copy its pattern and teach myself to sew it. Bonus, I get to use 🖤💜aesthetic🖤💜 colours.
The original is a rugged trifold wallet with velcro closure. The fabric appears to be high-denier nylon or polyester canvas, with a waterproof PU backing.
For my copy, I used a black 400 denier nylon pack cloth with waterproof PU backing; and a puple 400 denier water-resistant polyester canvas with a neat twill weave. I bound the wallet edges in black 3/4" (10mm) wide twill tape, and used a scrap of purple 1" (25mm) wide nylon webbing for the coin pouch pull tab. For thread, I used Glide Trilobal Polyester in "Iris".
I chose Snag-Free Velcro, which has both hooks and loops in the same tape. The loops tend to be just a smidge taller than the hooks, which means you need to press the two tapes together to get good adherence (hence reducing unwanted adherence!). This might end up being a poor choice for a wallet, as I don't typically press my wallet closed with much force, and just folding it together isn't always enough to make the Velcro stick.
On the exterior, there's a little coin pouch with velcro closure
Brand new, there's a clear vinyl ID window on the centre panel of the original wallet's exterior, but this window always breaks in my experience, so I omitted it on mine.
Inside, there are three areas for holding cards, and a bill slot behind the card slot panel.
The left and centre -thirds have two side-loading card holders each; one front and back. In the front slot, the cards are partly visible; in the back, cards are hidden. The right panel also has two card holders, these are vertical-loading; in the back slot, cards are hidden by the cards in front.
I usually keep my tappable bus card in the centre of the bill slot (the area closest to the exterior of the closed wallet), so that I can tap the entire wallet to pay my bus fare. I added an elastic to help keep the bus card in its place, but I'm not entirely sold on this feature yet.
To protect my tappable payment cards, I would usually keep them in an RFID blocking envelope in a vertical card slot panel. But since I'm sewing my own entire wallet, I decided to line the whole card slot panel with RFID blocking fabric.
I also added a little flap to keep my receipts separate from my bills.
This being my first attempt at copying the wallet, I learned a lot in the process!
When this wallet wears out, I'll sew myself another; but with some changes, for sure.
Oh! Also!
The RFID-blocking fabric passed two basic tests:
wrap my phone the fabric (try to keep the wrapping only 1 layer thick); the phone has no reception (tested by sending myself emails; having someone call me; attempting NFC tap) ✅
with a tap-enabled payment card inside, tap the closed wallet at a tap-enabled point-of-sale till during payment; payment does not work ✅
Unfortunately, the wallet also blocks my bus pass. But I'd rather it block too much than too little; I can figure out a different solution for the bus pass.
I'm quite pleased with how this turned out, and am looking forward to making one for my partner!
