The wallet that led to the creation of my YouTube channel

When I started sewing, one of the first pieces I made was a wallet following a tutorial from the Sewing Times channel. It turned out a bit wonky, the zipper on the central pocket wasn’t great, but I still used it for a while. In the beginning, one of my biggest challenges was visualizing the position of the different parts of a project. The fact that we sew with the wrong side facing out and then turn everything right side out took a while to make sense to me — and even today, every now and then, I get confused and end up sewing on the wrong side.

That’s exactly what happened with that wallet. In one of the steps I sewed the pieces in the wrong direction, unpicked everything, and did it again. Later, when I made a second wallet to give as a gift, I made the same mistake… three times in a row. I was so frustrated. I clearly remembered going through the same thing with the first wallet, and still I repeated it all over again. To avoid falling into the same trap, I decided to start taking notes on the most confusing steps.

Some time later, I decided to make a new wallet for myself. This time I already felt confident enough to customize the pattern: I wanted card slots on the back and an extra pocket inside the zippered compartment. I made a paper mock‑up to understand the assembly order and, following the notes I had written, I started sewing. Even so, I still got it wrong again. That’s when I decided that, instead of taking notes, I would start recording short videos of the more complex steps in my projects.

For a while, I recorded videos and kept them on my computer, checking them whenever I needed. But I quickly realized that this strategy wasn’t practical: since the videos were on a desktop computer, I couldn’t take it to the sewing room, and the hard drive filled up in no time.

Meanwhile, my brother had already told me several times that I should create a YouTube channel to share my DIY projects, but I was more focused on making than filming. Until one day, while I was lining some cardboard boxes with wallpaper to organize the sewing room, he brought it up again. I thought that project would be perfect to try it out — and that’s how my channel was born.

In the first videos you can clearly see my lack of experience, both in filming and editing. But over time I improved, and now video editing takes me only half the time it used to. Despite the work involved in maintaining the channel, it has been worth it. It pushed me to learn new things, and it’s fun to look back and see how many different projects I’ve tried. Plus, whenever I have doubts about how I made something, I just rewatch one of the old videos.

Almost all the videos show my first attempt at making something. Many times I have no idea what I’m doing — I figure it out as I go — and if I don’t film it, I probably won’t remember next time. It has already happened with simple projects that I thought didn’t deserve a video, and later I regretted it because, when I tried to repeat them, either I didn’t remember some detail or I made a mistake.

That first wonky wallet ended up being taken apart. Part of it became this phone pouch that I still use today. And in a way, it was that wallet that led me to create a channel and to document so much of what I do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Enough reminiscing — let’s get to the wallet.

These are all the pieces I used to make this latest version. This time I didn’t add a zipper to the central pocket because, in the previous version that had one, I never used it — it was almost always left open. Since the flap covers the central pocket, there’s no risk of anything falling out.

The measurements shown do not include seam allowance; add whichever allowance you prefer, and feel free to adjust the dimensions to the size you want. One of the best things about knowing how to sew is being able to customize your pieces. The pieces that correspond to the lining are marked with an *.

The brown fabric is an upholstery fabric — it’s quite thick, so I didn’t use interfacing on any piece. For thinner fabrics, add interfacing to the exterior pockets and the flap.

Here’s the video.