Tea Wallet Tutorial

Alright!  As promised here's my little tea wallet tutorial.  And don't worry, even a beginner can sew this.  I use my sewing machine but you only use a straight stitch so you could easily sew these by hand as well.

You will need:

Scissors

2 5x7 inch pieces of outer fabric (I recommend quilting cotton or home decor weight fabric)

2 5x7 inch pieces of fabric for inside pockets (quilting weight cotton is best)

1 5x7 inch piece of light weight fusible interfacing (not needed if you are using home decor weight fabric for outer fabric)

coordinating thread

2-3 inch piece of thin elastic cord (or just cut a thin elastic hair tie in half!)

sewing machine or needle and thread

pins

iron and iron board

Step 1:

Cut 2 5x7 inch pieces of your outer fabric.  If you have a rotary cutter and mat, great!  If not scissors will work just fine as well.

Step 2: Cut out 2 5x7 pieces of your inner pocket fabric and 1 5x7 inch piece of interfacing.  You should now have a total of 5 pieces.

Step 3: Fuse your interfacing to one piece of your outer fabric.  You can find some tips on working with fusible interfacing here.  Set two outer fabric pieces aside for now.

Step 4:  Grab your two inner fabric pieces and fold them each in half and press.

Step 5: Sew a 1/4 inch seam along the fold of both pieces.

 

Step 6:  Take your piece of outer fabric that does NOT have interfacing on it and place one of your pocket pieces 1 inch up from the bottom.  Pin in place and sew along the bottom of the pocket.  (Note you will be sewing through two layers of the pocket fabric and one layer of the outer fabric.  Pin well if you are afraid of the fabric slipping, you want it to be stitched nice and straight with no bunches)

Step 7:  Take your second pocket piece and lay it along the bottom edge of the same piece.  Stitch along the the bottom of this pocket as well.

It should now look like this:

Step 8: Fold your pocket piece and half and press to make a crease.  Sew up this crease from the bottom to the top of your pockets creating 4 separate pockets.

Step 9: Take your piece of elastic cording or hair elastic and fold it in half.  Pin, looped side facing in, to the center right hand side.  Stitch in place.

This part can be tricky as it's pretty thick for most machines. I like to lower my presser foot right on top of it and do a couple back and forth stitches as opposed to trying to get up and over the elastic.

Step 10: Take your interfaced outer piece and pin to your outer pocket piece, right sides together.

Step 11:  Stitch all the way around all 4 sides but leave a 2-3 inch opening along the bottom.  Tip:  Sew with the interfaced side up, your fabric will shift less resulting in a more even wallet.  Clip all 4 corners taking care not to cut through your stitching.  This is important as it reduces bulk when you turn it inside out, resulting in cleaner thinner corners.

Step 12:  Turn your wallet inside out through the small opening along the bottom.  Use a point turner (or a chopstick like I do) to push your corners out.  Press both sides.

Step 13:  Top stitch all the way around your tea wallet.  Take care around the corners, especially the bottom two as there is a lot of fabric and your machine might balk a bit at getting through them all evenly.  Your wallet should now look like this:

and inside:

Step 14:  Pick a button!  This happens to be my favorite part and as you can see I have a bit of a thing for buttons.  Yes, that is only my cream, black, and brown colored ones, I have 2 other containers full of other colors :)

Step 15:  Sew your button on!  Take care to line up your button with your elastic loop to make sure it will fit over once stitched in place.  You also want to make sure you only sew the button through the outer layers and not through the pocket.  It's a bit tricky but it helps to hold the pocket open while you do it.  If you stitch through the pocket your tea bags won't fit.

And that's it!  There you go, your finished tea wallet!

Enjoy!

If you have any questions please leave me a comment, with your email address so I can reply!