I’ve been so busy lately and haven’t been able to do any sewing. I miss going to class and having dedicated weekly sewing time!
Recently a friend was showing me her leather passport cover in preparation for an upcoming trip. It was really cute, but just before I ran out to get one for myself, I stopped and wondered if I could make a cover myself.
Using bunnybum’s free passport sleeve tutorial and pattern, I decided to use some of the scraps I already had. I was really tempted to buy some cute London or Paris themed fabric (I found a cute print on Etsy), but I resisted! Bunnybum uses cotton for both the outside and inside, but I decided to use the oilcloth to make the outside water resistant and to give it a little extra structure. Plus I had leftover fabric from my sewing machine cozy.
Everything was smooth sailing until I started sewing the sleeves. I sewed one side and then it got stuck. At first I assumed the oilcloth was getting stuck to the bottom of the machine (I was using a teflon presser foot, so I wasn’t worried about the top). I tried covering the sewing machine with masking tape, which didn’t make a difference. After consulting on PatternReview.com, I put some tissue paper on the bottom of the fabric, which didn’t help either.
I then realized that the oilcloth was not the problem! Between the fabric and the folded raw edges on the inside, the fabric was too thick to go through my sewing machine (it came out to be about 8 layers at the edges). I forced the fabric through the machine a little bit, but then it just became impossible. I almost hand sewed the rest, but I was able to force just one more side through which made it usable. So I’ll have to live with a partial seam on one side (sorry for the bad pictures!):
And a messy seam on the other side:
Project Stats
Pattern: bunnybum’s passport sleeve tutorial and pattern
Time: 1.5 hours (would’ve been less if I hadn’t encountered so many sewing problems!)
Fabric: Two 6″x12″ pieces
Notions: Thread
On the Grainline 
You know, I often have the same problem when sewing (too much material for my machine to handle) and no matter what it may look like to me (usually a mess!), no one else seems to notice unless I point it out. Usually they think “wow, that looks great!!” which was my first reaction to your project : )
By: Nikki on February 12, 2011
at 10:24 am
And this is the perfect place to do it. Then take white paint and make stitch marks
along the edge (little dashes along the edge) If you wanted you can
outline the heart in black as well. G0 homemade.
By: Joanns Craft Coupon on May 22, 2013
at 1:43 pm