Tutorial: Upcycle your sewing patterns into a wallet


We all have those old sewing patterns sitting around in the back of our sewing cupboards.  The ones we have picked up from op shops or on special, ones we bought with all good intention of making and ones that we know we will never fit into that sizing ever again!

Drag them out and upcycle them into cute & practical pvc wallets.

The finished size of this closed wallet is 22cm x 13cm
You will need:
Sewing pattern piece 52cm long x 23cm wide
Light weight (8g is ideal) clear PVC 52cm long x 23 cm wide x 2
A walking foot always helps when sewing with PVC but it's not essential
Snap fasteners - with or without a gripper tool and felt
Paper Clips
Pinking Shears

Iron all the creases from your pattern piece and sandwich it between the two pieces of pvc
Hold it together with paper clips - don't pin, you'll leave holes
Set your sewing machine to zig zag and sew across both ends - one at a time, pinking shear the ends.
Fold both ends towards the middle and measure 11.5cm like shown above
Add paper clips to hold 


Find the centre of both folded ends and mark where your snap fastener needs to go.
They will not show through to the front of your wallet. Place the prong component of the fastener between the layers and poke it through a little where you marked.You may need to remove your clips to do this.
If you are using a gripper, add some felt underneath plus in between to help reduce marking the plastic.  Here is a tutorial for using snap fasteners with a gripper tool. Using a hammer a tool will do less damage of the PVC.
Add the second pair of fastener components to the other side.
Replace your clips and sew again with a zig zag stitch down both sides of the wallet.
Pinking shear both side edges.


This wallet can be used for so many different things.

3 comments:

nicole said...

oh this looks fantastic!!
what a great idea!

Joyce Remley said...

Thanks for this tutorial. I can just imagine so many papers to recycle into wallets for Christmas gifts for sewing friends !!! This is the neatest thing to do and you are so clever !!! Joyce

Anonymous said...

SO CLEVER!!