I promised more pouches, and more pouches there will be - though this is just a few of them, there’s plenty more to come. In this post though I’m sharing the pouch love and all of these were gifted to relatives over the last month or so.
Let’s start with the smallest ones
This year we decided that cash would probably be the most welcome present for our nieces and their partners, but I also wanted to do more than pop it into a card. Many years ago I wrapped some cash up with some chocolate, and they were obviously much younger but the cash was discarded in favour of the chocolate (you can tell we’re related!) and so I was keen to avoid that, especially as there’s more of us now which means there’s a lot more wrapping paper to sort through!
Anyway I thought the pouches with the vinyl fronts would work, but smaller. And so I made one half the size of the smallest one I’d previously made - opting for the easy maths every time - but it was a bit too small. So I went midway between the two measurements and ended up with two pouches that size, alongside the smaller one.
I was happy, and so were the recipients though I think they were most happy with the cash inside. My 4 year old great niece was probably ambivalent about receiving the smallest one (even with a £1 coin in) as let’s face it at that age there’s much more interesting things going on.
Repurposing an old shirt
Even MOH didn’t escape, though I took a different approach here as I knew he’d say he didn’t want/need one - but as you know that’s never the right answer to the pouch question. I decided that by using one of his old shirts (which he’d already discarded and I’d claimed as ‘potentially being useful at some point in the future’ I should add) he couldn’t argue that it wasn’t his thing.
I can be canny like that.
He’d said that he tends to keep his coat on while on the train even though it can be too warm as he hasn’t got anywhere to put his phone or wallet… I told you the answer to these types of questions is “you need a pouch for that!”
And so I made him a pouch for that, whether or not he’ll use it is another matter but I know it’s been with him on his recent London trip. So that’s at least part of the battle.
For this one I cut one side of his old Superdry shirts, using the breast patch pocket and the buttoned placket, which I sewed closed before assembling the pouch. I left the pocket functioning as a pocket, thinking that it would add interest and may actually also be useful. Along with the same material for the back, and a toning zip I followed the same process as for the vinyl fronted pouches, now fully confident about the size changes. I’ve worked out the back needs to be about 1.5 inches bigger than the front to allow for it to wrap around to the front.
For this one I used an old denim chambray shirt (also MOH’s) for the lining - again not taking any chances on the material choice, and you never know it may even get used.
A flamboyance of flamingos
That’s actually the proper name for a group of flamingos, isn’t that great? Almost as great as this set of pouches I made for mum who has made, and continues to make, me many pouches which I’ll never complain about. Mum was quite taken with the flamingo pouch in the original stack of pouches, and so I thought with my newfound size knowledge I could go flamingo mad (or plamingo mad as they’re sometimes known in our family).
And so I did.
With four more pouches! Each fits inside the other - and so it was a tropical flamingo pass the parcel for one - what’s not to like?