Amy Butler Business Card Keeper

I'm having some cards made for Sewing Summit, which makes me feel a little self conscious, actually. But there it is - I'll have cards on the off chance someone actually wants one. I thought it would be nice to have a little self-sewn keeper for the cards, but I am NOT a bag maker. That's your disclaimer, right there.

And here is my card holder! I used this free pattern by Amy Butler. It went together really easily, and I thought the pattern was good and well thought out.

Here are the guts. It's a very simple pattern. Did I mention that I am not a bagmaker? More on that in a moment. The pattern recommended quilting cotton, but I don't have much of that in the stash, so I used scraps left over from various projects. I also don't keep peltex around, so I had to get a little creative with the interfacing. I ended up using Pam's Shirt Crisp for the main pieces and hair canvas for the back piece (where it called for peltex). Since peltex is a bit thicker than hair canvas, I used three layers of canvas that I serged around the edges. I also used hair canvas in the card slot section (pink), but I made the mistake of leaving the seam allowances untrimmed, so the seams there are incredibly bulky. I had to hammer the heck out of them to get the thing to fold.

The closure is velcro, which I am extremely 'meh' about. I wish I had used a snap instead. Velcro just seems cheap to me. All in all though, I'm pretty pleased with it. It'll hold my cards, and I think it expresses my garment making tendencies.