When you travel overseas there are always lots of bits and pieces that need to be organised.  Travel documents are one of those things.  When you’re travelling as a family of four those passports, boarding passports and itineraries really add up!  I trawled the internet a little to see if I could find a suitable pattern for a travel wallet, and landed upon this one.

It was rather fun to sew something on a smaller scale. Because I do a bit of bag making I had plenty of suitable interfacings in stash, and raided my quilting cotton collection for the fabrics.

I made this exactly as per the tutorial. On the left hand side there are two pockets that fit passports, an elastic loop to hold that pen that you can never find when you need it to fill in landing cards, and a full length pocket behind. The front pocket is made from clear plastic – I cut some from the packaging that sheet sets come in.

The girls’ passports slip nicely into the pocket at the back. On the right hand side are three credit card sized pockets, a small clip that I will attach the house key to, and another pocket behind where I can slip boarding passes and itinerary documents.  The elastic loop that closes the wallet was originally one of the girls’ hair ties (much to their disgust – but hey, the colour matches).  I made the bias binding.  The travel wallet really is just for at airports – it will live in the hotel safe most of the time and I’ll use another wallet for cash and cards.

Now, don’t look too closely at the stitching on this travel wallet – it’s far from perfect, but this was meant to be a trial wallet. There are a couple of things that I would have done differently the second time if my husband’s workplace redundancy and my subsequent return to full-time work had not taken place. The wallet is a bit too short for an A4 document folded into three to slide into one of those back pockets. It could have done with just a little over an extra centimetre to allow for itineraries etc to fit in there. Also, for a family of four I could have done with two more pockets for passports. I have sketched out a variation that I will make one day for any subsequent overseas trips. There are other terrific patterns for family sized travel wallets available such as this one and this one if you don’t want to come up with your own. I always find it useful to start off with a pattern that someone has already drafted as a base, then alter it to meet my own needs. I might include a zippered compartment in a subsequent version as well.

So you know what this means – we’re almost ready to depart! I’m taking my laptop with me, so as free wi-fi and time permits I might subject you to photos and stories from our travels (as well as continuing in my attempt to get my sewing blogging up to date). And a message to any potential burglars who stalk sewing blogs just hoping for information about when people will be away – we have house-sitters staying, so no point coming near my place!  For those of you wondering about our itinerary, we are spending four nights in Bangkok, then catching the overnight train to Chiang Mai.  We have six nights in Chiang Mai – and while I am there I am catching up with Gaye to go fabric shopping!  Woo hoo!  Then we fly down to Khao Lak, where we spend eight nights in a resort with kids club, massages, cocktail classes, etc etc before flying home again (on an overnight flight, eurgh).  I bet that all the Melbournians reading this are feeling rather envious right now, as the winter cold and wind swirls around us……..