Tutorial: Passport Cover

Welcome to my second tutorial, at last! Here I am going to guide you through the making of a passport cover, which you can personalise how ever you choose - the only limit is your imagination...

You will need:

1 piece of felt 29.5cms x 14cms

1 piece of felt 18.5cms x 14cms

Embroidery thread (green in the picture below) and needle*

Things for decoration (in this case I am using some fish beads and the blue thread to sew them on)

* note that you don't have to use embroidery thread. I have chosen this for big, chunky and obvious stitches around the edge of the cover - wool would achieve a similar effect, but any thread can be used providing you are able to sew with it! Finer thread will not give such obvious stitching and if you prefer this you may also want to choose a colour that matches the fabric well.

Step 1

If you are not adding decoration of any sort to the outside of your cover, then please jump to Step 3. If you would like to add decoration, follow these steps as an example.

On the larger of the two pieces of felt, measure and place pins 5.5cms from each end. These indicate where you will later fold the edges over, so your decoration needs to be in the area between. It may also help to place a pin in the middle of the piece of fabric to show where the cover will fold.

Step 2

Add your decoration! Here, I have used the embroidery thread to stitch some seaweed, and I then sewed the fish beads on next to it. If you like the flower decoration on my original passport cover, you can use this pattern from my hairclip tutorial to cut out the pieces.

This picture below shows the back of my work - it doesn't matter if this is messy at this stage because it will be covered by the other piece of felt.

Step 3

Place the smaller piece of felt in the centre of the larger piece (on the reverse side of any decoration). Fold over the edges of the larger piece of felt and pin in place - they should fit snugly around the smaller piece giving an overlap of about 5.5cms on each side. This forms the pockets that will keep you passport safely in place.

Step 4

Cut a length of embroidery thread approximately 90cms long. Attach your thread underneath the flap at the bottom edge of the cover as shown below. It can be secured using a couple of stitches.

Step 5

Stitch the pieces of felt together. You can use an ordinary 'over stitch' for this, but I am a big fan of the 'blanket stitch' which is shown below. As you make a stitch, before pulling it tight, take your needle and thread it back through the loop.

Once you get to the other end, fold the flap out and secure your thread on the inside - this keeps things nice and neat and out of site!

Step 6

Repeat steps 4 and 5 on the top edge of the cover.

You should now have a finished passport cover! I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial. Please feel free to comment if you have any questions or need any further help.