DIY Small Coin Purse

With the United States facing a national coin shortage, you may have seen signs on everything from drive-thru windows to cashier stands in grocery stores reading "Card or Exact Change Only." Now, most of us have a handful of loose change rolling around in our center consoles, purses, and pockets. But what do we do with those coins?

In comes the adorable small coin purse that you can whip up in less than thirty minutes. As a bonus, these are exceptionally cute for kids that want a place to store their tiny treasures.

Materials

• 2 - Outer pieces - 5 ½” x 4”
• 2 - Lining pieces - 5 ½” x 4”
• Thread
• 4-inch zipper
• Fusible interfacing
• Ruler
• Scissors
• Rotary cutter and mat
• Pins or clips
• Sewing machine

Step One: Cut and Fuse Your Fabric

Unless you’ve found the most epic fabric store that will cut your pieces, you’ll need to trim down your fabric choices to the sizes marked in the material’s list. Once you have that done, you’ll need to apply the fusible interfacing. 

The purpose of fusible interfacing is to give the fabrics something to grab. You're going to iron the fusible interfacing (which you'll need to cut to just a tiny bit smaller than your fabric squares) and iron it onto the backsides.

Lay the fusible interfacing with the 'bubbles' or 'bumps' facing outward and the flatter side touching the wrong side of the fabric. Then flip it over and iron (not press) the right side of the fabric.

After that side is ironed, flip it over and press the side with the interfacing using a “cotton steam” or ‘steam’ setting on your iron.

By doing this, the exterior and the lining of the coin purse will grab each other rather than having an open gap between the two materials.

Step Two: Add Your Zipper

You might notice that your zipper is longer than 4-inches. Zippers measure from one metal stopper to where the zipper stops. That is why we're going to put the zipper onto the 5 ½" sides of the fabric.

Place the zipper facing down against the right side of one of the exterior fabric pieces. Pin it into place and then sandwich a piece of the lining material on top with the right side, touching the exterior fabric’s zipper and right side.

Sew those together, be sure to use the zipper foot for your sewing machine. 

Fold it back, so both "wrong sides" of the inner and exterior fabrics are touching and then straight stitch across the top.

Repeat on the other edge of the zipper with the two remaining pieces of fabric.

Step Three: Finish Up!

The trick with projects that have a zipper is to use that zipper as the final turning point. So, unzip that zipper by about halfway. Then, fold the project over so that the lining pieces are right sides together, and the exterior material also has their right sides together.

Sew all the way around except for a small hole in the bottom of the lining. Trim the corners. Turn the right sides out, pull out the lining, and give it a final zig-zag stitch to close up.

Now that you’ve finished your coin purse, aren’t you ready to move onto your next project? Check out our blog for more fun crafts!