Helena's Card Case

Helena has a pocketful of various cards. When she goes out, the stack goes into her pockets-- driver's license, credit card, library card, etc.

I thought she could probably use a handy carrier to keep that unruly stack together. Thus, I offered to make her a card case.

I have made a couple so far, one which I keep here on my desk to hold expired cards to use as templates for card pockets in wallets. But these card wallets don't carry a big stack of cards like Helena has. She needs more pockets than 2, and the whole thing has to be slim.

So I whipped up a design in about 4 or 5 hours of work.

I offered to tool her a custom design for the front, and she chose this Korean proverb. Yes, it's off center to the left a bit, since I was experimenting with the overall design and the paper template apparently moved. But the reverse carving worked out okay.

That's the Beige Tiger thread, in .6 size, using my 3 mm stitching chisel from Japan Goods.

Here's the full exterior. There is no dye -- she wanted just natural leather, so this leather only has 2 coats of Resolene (diluted with water.)

The stitching line across the middle holds the middle pocket addition. Let's look inside...

I'm using red glazed pigskin here (and black pigskin to the right). The pocket to the right is the inserted pages, added 4 more pockets to make 6 in total.

Here's how the extra pockets work: I have a U-shaped piece of the red pigskin, with pockets on both sides of it. You can see the black-painted edge here -- that's the extra pockets.

Here's the center, showing the extra page with the black internal pockets. I also put a reinforcement strip in the middle. Otherwise, the thread holding the extra page would be pulling against the pigskin. That seemed risky to me, since the pigskin is very light. So now the thread which holds the pigskin pocket on is pulling against two thicker pieces of leather.

So, the proof of concept turned out okay -- I just threw it together quickly, so the stitching is not as straight as it should be.
But the design is sound, and now she has a custom card wallet.