Minimalist Leather Wallet

In this short and brief 'ible I will be walking you through how I made (and how you could make) your own minimalist leather wallet.

Materials:

Leather

Waxed Thread

Leather Needles

Leather Stitching Punches

Optional:

Laser Cutter

Stitiching Saddle

Dye and Applicator

I used a Glowforge laser cutter to cut the design from a 4-6oz piece of leather. Just measure the items you want to put into the wallet to get the dimensions and add around 1/8th of an inch all the way around. The design I used already had holes cut for threading, but a quick Amazon search or trip to your big box craft supplier should yield you the supplies you need. I ended up punching the holes again with a leather stitching punch one at a time to enlarge the holes. I used a dark brown dye on my leather for an aged look.

If you dyed your leather you will need to let it dry overnight or better and let the leather stiffen back up a bit. Choose a thread and grab your needles, this part is tricky. A stitching saddle really comes in handy, and I didn't have one. So I used an old (and cheap) Harbor Freight wood clamp. I added to the clamp a small piece of oak on each side (be sure to ease the sharp edges over with some sandpaper), glued perpendicular to the clamp. I added some light weight leather with rubber cement. You can hold the clamp in your lap as you stitch. I used a saddle stitch sewing both pieces together. You could use some glue or rubber cement to help hold the working pieces together as you sew, but I didn't and it only took about 20 minutes to get both sides zipped up.

**Full disclosure, this is the first leather thing I have ever made, so I'm not going to pretend to know the ins and outs of leather craft, but I learned by watching Jimmy Diresta and other people on Youtube. So with this instructable and a couple others online you should do just fine.

*Note, the piece in the clamp is not the wallet, something else I was working on.

Finished! Told you it was minimalist...

The pictures here are from both my first (Chase card) and second (blue stitches). It needs to be worked in a bit. The leather will stretch and getting your cards out will get easier over time. A friend for work saw mine and loved it so much he commissioned one on the spot! I absolutely love this thing. It holds about 5 cards and a couple of bills, which is all I ever carry. It seems like every time I take it out to get something out of it someone asks me about it.