Make a Leather Tri-Fold Wallet - FREE PDF PATTERN SET - Build Along Tutorial

what's up everyone Justin from make supply here and today's video is a build along tutorial for making a trifold wallet the day has finally come the most requested template set of all time a trifold this template set is a free PDF download if you want to download this pattern for free to print out and make with us just go to the link in the description below it'll take you to my website and you can download it in letter size or a4 size paper it is also available as an acrylic template set for purchase in my webstore or my Etsy store and also as a new format which is a laser ready digital file where if you have a laser cutter you can load it right up into your laser and cut your own templates or cut it directly out of leather this template set comes with all the stitching holes you need if you wish to use them so go ahead and download the template and print it out and come back and we will get to working on this trifold all right let's do inventory so you've never seen any of my videos before I will point out the tools that we'll be using in this video I try to use reasonably easy to come by things that anybody can get but if you have the more advanced version feel free to use them and also there is a table of contents below in the video description so you can skip around the video if you don't want to watch any of this I am going to discuss the template print out after this so for now I'm just going to take the template paper out of the way but I did print it on 110 pound cardstock I'll also discuss the leather after this part so maybe using a cork back ruler number 2 exacto knife CS osborne scratch awl some barge cement winged divider for marking stitching lines some thread nippers for cutting the thread this is 0.8 millimeter tiger thread white else that we have here I will be using the side WA diamond stitching chisels six prong and two prong this is a generic mallet from Amazon I will be using I hope I can find more binder clips but these are just two binder clips that I'm going to be using to hold glued pieces together it's much beneficial to have more than two Dremel burnisher or Dremel for with a sanding bit I'm gonna use this to sand not to burnish regular piece of 240 grit sandpaper just for generic sanding purposes a wood slicker for burnishing edges I'll also be using some gum tragacanth I don't have it right here but I'll I'll get it for that step and they this is a Montana tools edge beveler number two it's a little bit big for this project but I actually like the way that it bevels in the edges so that's what I'm gonna be using and anything I'm missing I don't think so but again I will list all these tools in the blog post for this video okay so let's look at the template printout so let's discuss the PDF print out for this trifold wallet like I mentioned in the introduction this is a free pdf download so you can go to the link in the description below and print this out and letter size paper or a4 paper please please please make sure to print it at a hundred percent scale if you don't do that it'll come out smaller than it's supposed to be and your well it won't work okay so first we'll look at the print out PDF and then the other I'll discuss quickly the other versions of this template that are available your PDF will print out onto three pages first page will have two halves of the outside show which I will discuss in a minute the second page will have the interior piece as well as the center panel they'll be writing on this - I'm not done formatting this yet and then the third page will be all the card slot options so there is a curved option or a straight option for all the card slots for this design you can mix and match if you want I'm just going to be using the curves today okay so let's go back to the front the first page just to explain this this piece was too large it's too large to print on one piece of paper so I had to cut it in half and then we're gonna attach it together to make one piece and as you can see here it has all the stitching holes marked if you want to use them alright so when we put this together it's going to look just like this just like a standard shell for a wallet okay so what you're gonna do is you're going to cut out all three of these pieces just around the outsides and then what you'll have will be this you'll have the connector panel piece one hour piece a and piece B it's what you're gonna do is you are going to then make sure you line up your holes on the bottom here you're just gonna move you're just gonna line up the edge of the center to the edge of the to the center line of the connector pad here and you can glue that or tape it I use the barge cement on the paper here so you're just gonna put it like this and glue that down and take the other piece line it up nice and straight put it on to that connector pad meet in the middle and glue that down or tape it and then you will have your completed outer panel okay so that's what you have to do to make the outside piece there and just to save some time I've already cut out the other pieces and I'm going to be using running out of daylight here so I want to make sure I get all this in so here's the inside panel from this page just cut around the outside and then since I'm using kerb slots I cut the curved slots out t-slot and the bottom slot and then the center panel which is mandatory and then the curve option of the card slot for the center panel and as you can see this will all go together like this Center panel onto the middle here all the holes will line up if you want to use them and then center panel card slot here and then T slots on the edge you need to cut two T slots out of the other there's a marking there's a some dotted lines that will guide you to where the T slots go and then card slots on the outside edge there just like that okay so this will all make more sense as we get working so now I will go grab the leather that we're using and we will discuss that and all right before we get started I forgot to mention the other options for this template set so as with all the template sets I have an acrylic version so this is a physical acrylic version that if you're interested in purchasing is available in our webshop it comes with we're on our Etsy store it comes with both card slot options and everything that you have in the PDF pack with all the stitching holes marked see that there and there's a new format as well that I'm starting to roll out where I have a section on the website called this is only available on the website called laser ready files basically I format these designs so if you have a laser cutter or you want to take it to a dye maker you can use those files they're specifically EPS files and SVG files that you can then laser cut your own acrylic templates or send it to a dye maker or you can just laser cut it straight onto leather and it has certain formatting that I think works for most laser cutters so that's also an option in our webstore okay so I started but I actually have to go back in I explained something before so I'm gonna start over on this part the leather I'm going to be using is a wicked and Craig natural vegetable tanned leather and this is 2 to 3 ounces so it's pretty thin with the trifold leather you're going to have more problems if your leather is thicker obviously it has to fold over itself two times so that extra thickness become a problem once you have credit cards and a cash and then in somebody's pocket it becomes like a brick so your best option is to use the thinnest leather that you have and also if you have a somewhat flexible leather this isn't very flexible but as it gets used it will become more flexible so anything you know nice and thin has a little bit of flex to it will be the best option for this you can still use it you know if you have a three to four ounce leather for like all the other projects that I use you can do it just make sure to do your skiving and keep your edges nice and clean and then and you should be fine there's not too many t-slot layers here so you should be okay as I mentioned before all the holes are marked in here so if you are going to be using holls make sure to mark them as you're tracing and cutting out here I'm not going to use the holes here I might use them later for some positioning but I'm not using them for stitching so I already traced this one but I wanted to make sure to come back and explain this before I go so again if you're using the holes for stitching make sure you mark all of your holes as you go along and then trace okay so I'll get back it's a tracing here okay and just to remember you're gonna need to t-slots of whatever design you choose to bottom card slots and then everything else is one piece so one Center panel one center panel card slot one inside panel and one outside pal okay so I'm going to go ahead and just trace the rest of these out and then cut them and then we'll come back and look at I don't know how easy that is the see there but I got all my card slots to T thought to to T slots to bottom card slots the center card slot in the center panel I cut out the outside panel and the inside panel already in the homestretch here okay so I went ahead and cut all the pieces out as you can see we have everything lined up here for now I'm going to take the outside panel and just put it off the side we're not going to need that for a minute and so what I'm gonna do now is I'm gonna start with the center panel I am for the sake of time I'm not going to burnish the card slots so at this point if you are going to be burnishing your edges you want to burnish all the card slots to the top edge as well as the top edge of the center panel card slab I'm not gonna do that I'm just gonna go straight into the build process so what we're gonna do now is start with the center panel and by gluing the card slot on to the center panel and then stitching it down and then going from Center panel on to the body piece like that okay so you can kind of move everything you're not going to be using out of the way grab your glue all right want to go ahead and card slots down line up all the edges nice and straight the more accurate you are early in the project the easier it'll be as you start adding more layers and all that good stuff okay and now you have your card slot onto your center panel I'm gonna go ahead and grab my winged divider mark out about an eighth of an inch and then mark stitching lines on you don't have to do the bottom and the top but it's here I might as well do it so I'm just gonna do because right now we're just gonna be doing the two sides all right find my stitching chisels so I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start from the top here I'm going to over hang the last prong on the edge there and then just walk it down with hand pressure you don't have to go all the way to the corner if you don't want to I'm not I'm gonna stop somewhere close to the bottom some are like that same thing on the other side okay [Music] a little granite slab here and then you're just gonna punch your holster get some camera better [Music] okay so I punched all my holes there and again do not punch the bottom do not punch the top yet that'll be later so just your two sides so I'm gonna go ahead and stitch these up these two sides up off-camera I have a saddle stitching video if you need help saddle stitching I did it a couple years ago it's in my feet otherwise I'm just gonna go do that now and then we'll come back and look at our result alright so I went ahead and stitched both sides of that card slot there and next step will be to bevel and burnish the edges here so first I'm just gonna rough this off with the sandpaper a little bit [Music] and then find my edge bow again just the sides here don't they the bottom [Music] grab a little bit of gum tragg [Music] okay that's good enough for our purposes here we just went ahead and furnished both sides of the card center card panel because once we put it together you won't be able to access it all right so move that stuff out of the way and now you want to grab your inside panel here so as you can see I have some markings for how the panel lines up you want to put it you know directly in the center there so if you want to use I'm gonna use the PDF actually the paper printout and kind of just line it up here and then I'm gonna grab my scotch all and just put little marks right where this should align on the leather right just right on the edge of the leather because then you know once we put it together you won't even be able to see those marks because the cards panel will be over top of them top and bottom okay and then you're gonna go ahead and just you know I'd up make sure everything looks nice and even on both sides and go ahead and grab your glue and now we're going to be gluing the top edge and the bottom edge okay all right and then carefully place your panel where it needs to be okay so I'm going to let that sit for a minute and then we're going to come back and Mark our stitching holes alright so now we are just going to be stitching the top not the bottom the bottom will be at the end so just stitch the top so go ahead and Mark your stitching line and go ahead and grab your irons or whatever you're using and mark your holes okay alright you know the drill by now got to our top layer of holes marked go ahead and stitch that up and then we will come back and move on okay went ahead and Stitch the top there so same as before now we are just going to stay on the top [Laughter] get it nice and straight there and then bevel and burnish [Applause] so what I'm going to do I'm actually just going to burnish this whole top section here and that will be good enough for our purposes okay so now it is time to put the card slots on so you can start with either side you want so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to grab a card slot and a tea slot and then I'm gonna put the card slot just with no glue just put it down and it's on the camera better here and just line it up where it's supposed to be right edge to edge the back front and the sides okay and then from there I'm going to just hold it down and then put my tea slot in and then make sure it's nice and snug fit just like that make sure it's nice and even on both sides okay that looks good okay and then from here what I'm gonna do is then I'm just gonna hold the t-slot down and remove the card slot and that's where I'm gonna mark the back of where the T slot is there so let me find my scratch awl so right here I'm just gonna kind of trace lightly trace the outline of where the T slot will be sitting just like that okay because now I know where to put the glue and glue it down so I'm gonna go ahead and do that now find another piece of leather here here we go again you're just putting a little blue on the bottom parts not anywhere else yet you can't put glue here if you're ready okay so now at the same time when I'm putting this down before it really gets attached I want to you know move this around make sure everything is nice and straight and then you know put my card slot back and make sure it aligns nicely before I stitch it down okay so that's basically right where I want my cards left to be so now I'll move the t-slot down a little bit and that looks pretty good nice and snug no gaps okay all right looks good so I'm gonna go ahead and mark my stitching line you can stitch across the whole bottom if you want you really don't have to though you just gotta put a couple stitches in there so it was kind of Center what I like to do with all the center my iron like that and then punch through all right and you know the deal go ahead and stitch that and then we'll come back all right stitch at the bottom of the t-slot down now you can glue you want to put a layer of glue all the way around the bottom here and glue the t-slot down and then we will put the card slot down as well okay go ahead and glue your t-slot down the rest of it and then also your card slot once you're happy with the position you know let it sit and attach there okay so I'm going to wait a minute and then we're going to go and put the top line of stitching down on this card slot section okay so I'll let that sit for a minute now I'm gonna grab some sandpaper and just clean up this top edge make it nice and even okay so now this part is a little bit tricky when you think about it so as you can see the holes go all the way around a card slot of the card slot section on the inside however on the outside there's only holes from the left from the side and to the bottom so what we have to do is stitch across the top section and down a little bit right around to right where the it starts the straight section of the left side so around the curve into the straight section and then stop so then when we sew the outside on we can continue from there it'll make more sense in a second here if you've never done this before so what I'm gonna do I'm just gonna draw you know my stitching groove on the top here and what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go around the curve right about to there right where it looks like it's starting the downward section that's pretty good so that's that's what we're gonna be stitching right now so what I'm gonna do is I'm going to start with my two prong and I'm just going to start from that that point there and I'm just gonna walk around the edge and then grab my six prong and finish the job right today okay put this on camera better here so we have it across the top and then right around the corner to where it starts to go straight down and we're gonna punch those okay and you can see that there all right so again there's a lot of short stitching sections in this project so I'm gonna go ahead and stitch that and then we will come back all right went ahead and made that stitching line there all right so that will be also how we do the other side before we set up and attach to the outside panel okay so you're gonna do the exact same thing on the other side I'm gonna do it off camera just to save time but literally the same thing do your t-slot stitch your t-slot down glue your card slot down and then stitch on that top section around the corner right to where it starts to go down okay and then we will come back and then we will attach our outside now okay so I went ahead and stitched the top of the other side after you know gluing down the card slots like we did the first time and you can see what we have here okay so now we're gonna go ahead and burnish the top edge of this card slot so go ahead and do your bevel all right now our top sides are all burnished now and it is time to put on the top throw the outside sorry so this is the trickiest part of the whole project and first we're gonna have to burnish the top edge it's the same design on both sides so you can just choose a side all right good enough okay so for this part you really have to make sure you line everything up good when you're doing this what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be connecting we're gonna be gluing to the mitt the bottom here to the middle so we're gonna be starting in the middle of this cards of this project not on the outside so with a normal bipolar you start on one side and then you do the other side then you've done this you have to start in the middle to get this bottom part don't do anything to the top just to the bottom here all right and then once we glue that down we're gonna punch it from the back stitch this through and then our middle will be done and then we'll fold each and then we'll do each side okay so I find it's pretty good - whatever template you're using to go ahead and grab that grab whatever you're outside template was and I'm actually gonna use the holes for this so I'm going to put my template down on top of my shell and then I'm just gonna use these two outside holes just to give me an idea of where this is gonna line up okay and then if you want to use a ruler to make sure you have an even amount on both sides it should be about I think it's a quarter of an inch yeah make sure okay so it's about 3/8 of an inch that you want on both sides so you want to just kind of lay that down you know definitely take your time with this stuff you don't have to rush make sure it's nice and even okay that looks pretty good so what I'm gonna do now is grab a clip and then just make sure it stays and stays where it's at on the top there okay so now you're gonna glue the bottoms oh I wish I didn't do that well I'm dumb and I only clipz clipz the inside okay so ever I gotta redo that because I'm an idiot so let's put it back in line looks pretty good looks pretty good alright make sure you clip both pieces alright now we should be alright and I'm gonna go ahead and get some glue and then line it up give it a good squeeze and you can probably move your clips down to the bottom okay so now our just the bottom is getting glued down I'm gonna let that dry for a minute go grab something to eat and then we'll come back and stitch this down all right so I let that dry for a couple minutes okay I'm just gonna find my sandpaper put a little sanding okay so you can mark your line on the front here stitching groove and now you also have to mark one on the back so it's kind of eyeball where it is and that is I groove on the back so since we are going to be punching from outside in everywhere you got to do it on this side too so if you want you can mark from the corner and punch all the way through as a starting point I'm just gonna eyeball it I think I usually just take my chisel here and just kind of guess or you could even do this take your template put it over top this should line up pretty close if you did good good job cutting yeah it looks pretty good so I'll use this and then just mark through and those are your two outer holes okay and then once you have the holes that you are wanting to punch go ahead and punch through you've got three layers here now so you want to be more careful ok so I have my holes across the bottom there and I'm gonna go ahead and stitch them up alright I went ahead and stitched the bottom there so now our middle part is connected and now you are just going to do the outside sides like you would do a regular by pole so gonna go ahead and grab some glue getting dark here I'm trying not to block my light source don't forget when doing when you're gluing up the side here you're only going up to where that that last stitches there you don't want to glue all the way around all right so now you want to fold it and we're gonna make sure since the outside is longer and kinda how to fold them both in and then start along the outside edge make sure it's nice and even and then work yourself down the bottom here [Applause] so this parts a little bit of a pain in the butt well once you get it clipped down so I'm clipping at the to stress the most stress points which are up here and down here especially it really wants to pull away from the body there so yeah make sure it's nice in the street you can always clean up your edges later but the more even you do it now the less work you have to do later okay so that is gonna dry for a minute we'll come back and we will mark our stitching so that has been gluing for a couple of minutes now now I'm gonna just gently take off these clips make sure it doesn't separate and just give it a good sanding [Laughter] okay that looks pretty good so now I'm gonna draw or trace a stitching line on the inside here [Applause] and then of course one on the outside just remember you're only going up to that last stitch there so a good thing to do is take your scratch off and then poke a hole through that hole to the outside just like that now you know where your stitching line will start okay so we are going to be marking from that hole on the outside all the way to the end that's pretty good okay so when you're punching this don't punch through the first one because you might cut the thread will gently open that hole up as at the end so I'm gonna skip over that first hole that we marked and start at the second and then we're going to punch through [Applause] okay and like I mentioned for this last hole here I'm kind of just gonna take my single prong prick actually I'll just use a scratch awl and just kind of poke that through just like that we just need enough space to start the stitch okay I am going to go ahead and stitch this up and we'll come back okay I'm gonna head it in stitch that up get this in the camera the outside all right and as you can see we started here's the top and then goes all the way around and then we have one side completed so I'm going to do the same thing on the other side just glue it up mark my stitches and punch through in stitch and then we will come back and finish up all the edges and we'll be done all right we're all stitched up and in case you were just wondering why we have to do the center like that because now it allows the two edges here to have an up space to the two wings of the wallet to close and have enough space to wrap around themselves and catch that will be in this trifle okay so now the only thing left to do is to burnish so I'm going to move this out of the way and this too so now I'm gonna take my edger and edge this wallet oops not paying attention the Woodside I'm on here okay so now it is burnishing time actually I'm going to do a little sanding first I charged my Dremel up to sand these edges to even them out but I did a pretty good job all all around so I didn't have to do too much [Music] it's always good you can get the extra glue off of the edges the sanding [Music] [Music] [Music] all right now we're good to go definitely don't forget the middle all right that's a good enough as far as burnishing goes I mean obviously you can keep refining your edges down and make it nice and smooth and that will finish up our project here we kind of start giving to the creases you can see what I mean though a softer leather might stay closed right earlier than this one will because it's going to take a lot little bit of time sitting on end stuff for this type of leather to stay closed that by itself let me grab some there's some cash I mean this is a giant cash area so especially if you're so Union if you're using like um non-us banknotes that are bigger you may have plenty of space in here to put cash and then some cards [Applause] [Applause] here's another one I made I put a difference so I put a three to four ounce buck Brown harness leather shell on this one looks pretty cool to tune cool so that will conclude the build along tutorial for this trifold wallet if you have any questions feel free to email me and thanks for watching

Channel: Makesupply Leather

Views: 69,089

Rating: 4.9376874 out of 5

Keywords: leathercraft, leather template, free leather pdf, leather tri-fold wallet template

Id: eOFzMFKYDoM

Length: 82min 22sec (4942 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 08 2019