I recently taught my 3yo how to play Go Fish, Crazy 8’s and Old Maid. She totally understood the games and it blew me away BUT she couldn’t fit all those cards in her hands. I immediately went to Pinterest to see what solutions there were out there. I found this tutorial here and it was a brilliant idea! I wasn’t the biggest fan of the fabric she used but I had enough scraps on hand that I got to work matching. I put a couple combinations together that I liked.
I decided that I had a lot of polka-dotted denim so that would work as my base fabric. I cut two pieces sized 16 3/4″ by 10 1/2″. I then discovered I had enough to make 4 card holders.
Next, I cut out 3 pocket pieces for each card holder sized 4 3/4″ by 9 3/4″. The fabric was so wrinkly from being in storage that I took some time to iron everything out.
On the right side of the large piece, mark with a chalk line or a washable fabric marker 1 1/2″ down from the short edge, then another 5″ and another 5″. These lines will show you where to lay your pockets and where to later sew the corners of your card holder.
I took the teal chevron piece and sewed a seam along the long sides with right sides together. I turned it right side out and ironed the seam flat then topstitch to make the top of the first pocket.
*Here’s where I made my first mistake. I prefer to blame this on baby brain. I looked at my ruler width and saw the numbers 1 through 5 and thought to myself “okay so my ruler is 5 inches wide. Super convenient. I need to measure 5 inches for each side of the card holder.” I completely wasn’t thinking that my ruler was actually 6 inches and the 6 didn’t appear on the ruler because, hey, there’s no room. Oi. So I made a measurement error and this project would have been much easier if I had caught it sooner. But in my usual fashion, I figured out how to make up for the error later on.
When you look at your large piece of fabric, it should have 3 equal sections 5″ apart with an end panel for the velcro. You can see in my picture below that the top section is much smaller than the next two. That should have been my first clue.
I laid the chevron pocket 1″ from the top chalk line. Sew the bottom of the pocket to the larger piece.
Your next pocket piece will go 1″ below your last pocket top. Sew along the bottom and make sure the sides match at least on one side.
Sew your 3rd pocket. You can see in my picture that I have an extra inch of denim on the bottom which shouldn’t be there. If you’ve measured your fabric properly that chalk line should line up with your bottom pocket.
The tutorial I was following said to sew a seam securing the pockets vertically. I wasn’t sure about this at first but I’m glad I did it in the end. My cards fit fine and it’s pretty useless if the fabric has stretched out.
Sew one side of the velcro close to the chalk line on the skinny panel of your fabric.
Put your two pieces of large fabric face-to-face and sew a seam around the 2 long edges and one short edge. Leave the short edge with the velcro undone so you can flip it right side out. Once you’ve flipped the right sides out, iron the seams flat.
I used pieces of cardboard to stuff the card holder. I cut a piece to fit the first section, stuffed it in, and sewed across the first chalk line. I continued this step until the last section and finished the bottom with a very wiggley topstitch.
You can see that instead of my first cardholder having 3 equal 5″ sections, it has 2 full sections and the last is half and half. It still works fine! Oh well.
Here you can see my other card holders. I tweaked them a bit after realizing I had measured the first one incorrectly.
It was a much more difficult project than I was anticipating. Much of that was my own fault. My husband has a rule in our house that we shouldn’t do any house projects after 9:30pm because I’ve made some tired mistakes. He may need to amend that rule for sewing projects, as well. But I set out to make it easier to play card games with my daughter and easier it is! I call that a success 🙂
Planet Plan-it! 