Holiday Traveling! (and holiday gifts)

If you're standing in the security line at JFK with a two-year-old clinging to your leg and both hands clutching carry-on bags, you don't need the added fun of having to search for your passport and boarding pass while your phone's ringing from somewhere deep within one of your bags.  Piece Work's small bag lets you keep your passport, boarding pass, smart (or not-so-smart) phone, and a few sticks of gum within easy reach with no frantic searching needed.  And when you're trying to come up with last minute gift ideas, think first of Piece Work wallets and other things-- easy to pack, easy to ship, and everybody enjoys having a new wallet to play with!

New Design!

We had an email from a Shara Buffington in Enfield, New Hampshire, asking us if we could custom design a wallet for her.  She had an old black leather wallet that she wanted us to make out of our materials.  She also wanted a few changes-- a coin purse, a small notebook and a button closure. 

We love design work, and we happened to have some excellent material that suited her wishes as far as colors and theme went (chickens, reds and other warm tones), so we got to work. 

I then made the watercolor above of  the closed wallet (to the left in the painting)  overlapping the opened wallet.  You can see the cover with its great eggy button and serviceable elastic;  to the right you can see the ten credit card slots, coin purse, and sketch/notebook.  You can't see the two billfold sections, but the arrows show you where they are.

We love the way Shara's wallet came out, and after she field-tests it for a few weeks and gives us feedback, we'll make whatever modifications she suggests.  Stay tuned!  We expect to begin selling these larger wallets soon!  They measure around 6 inches high by 3 3/4 inches wide closed.  (Shara wanted to be able to slip it into her bag.)

Meanwhile, gift-giving has commenced, and-- although we did not jump into the Black Friday fray-- we hope you'll think of us when you're looking for small gifts that are super-easy to mail, stunningly light to carry in your luggage if you're traveling and want to bring a few along for gifts,  eminently affordable, and can be custom-made to suit the person you're buying them for.

This is our most exciting new chicken wallet made from material that Fran's sister Redda Loges and her husband Steve Gregory sent to us!  We love this painted image so much that I decided not to do a sketch of it but to scan the real thing so you could appreciate the subtle colors and beautiful tones of this bag.  Redda and Steve sent us a few more of these bags, so if you want us to make one for you, order it on the feed bag catalog page and specify "Redda and Steve's bag" in special instructions, and it's yours!

Overworked Wallet!

Recently my sister-in-law. Mary Daugherty, ordered a red Kettle wallet from us, and when I was visiting her in Michigan last week, I asked her how her wallet was doing.  We are always interested in  how our wallets are doing so that we can learn about any problems in our materials or designs and can work to correct them.  Mary loves her wallet, but she said she had had to fix it with clear tape because it had split slightly across the back seam.  I was upset that this had happened and in such a short period of time, so I asked her some questions about how she had been using it.  Mary said she had been on a trip with the wallet and had stuffed the credit card pocket behind the coin purse full of one dollar bills at the same time she had filled the coin purse with change.  She thought she had just overstuffed the wallet.

Well, an overstuffed wallet can be a problem, but we felt that a well-made wallet should be able to handle some overstuffing, and we started experimenting.  As a result of many tests, we realized that material such as Kettle film tends to tear when stressed along a row of stitching, especially if the stitches are relatively short, resulting in close-together holes.  We then decided to try the wallet without the row of stitching (which we always included in order to divide the back compartment in two in order to separate any cards that people put in there) and see what happened. Here's the revised wallet:

We like the newly-designed wallet very much and think you will, too.  But we still need to field test it, so we're making all of our new Kettle and other plastic film wallets without the back seam.  If you want to test drive one, order it on the Kettle page and specify test-drive on the order page.  We will mail you your wallet, and if you email us information about the performance of this wallet in three months, we'll send you a refund for the price of your wallet.  Also, if you have had a problem with the back of your wallet splitting, please let us know about it by emailing us at weRpiecework@gmail.com and we'll replace your wallet for free with the new design.  We want you to be fully satisfied with your Piece Work wallet!

Chicken Lover's Choice

You can imagine our excitement when the gorgeous chicken feed bag that this wallet is made from showed up on the doorstep the other night!  Our friends John and Rebecca Casey brought it to us, and we got to work immediately making as many deep blue, scarlet, black, and white chicken wallets as we could from the bag.  But you need to act FAST!  There is only one like the one shown here.  There are a few others, also beautiful, but with smaller chickens.  If you want this wallet, order it on the feed bags catalog page and specify BLUE along with a note saying you want a chicken lover's choice!

ALL NEW Grab 'n' Go Wallet

Our friend Dan Pincu asked us to design a tiny sleeve of a wallet that would fit inside his conventional wallet and that he could pull out and take to the gym, where he needs only  his gym card, driver's license, and an emergency $10 bill.  We love a challenge, so we made this prototype, which Dan is now testing for us.  Stay tuned.  If the little Grab 'n' Go works as well as we think it will, we'll add it to the Ultra-Slim catalog page and sell it for around $5 (including postage and handling).

Want to Add a Small Notebook to Your Wallet?

Working Wallet #2

You can turn your wallet into a traveling art kit by adding a small sketchbook, a pen or pencil, and a
miniature colored pencil set.  I found my set in the notions department of a Barnes & Noble, but I've
also seen them in other places, such as a toy store.  If you want to make your own sketchbook, stay
tuned for instructions in our next post.  If you don't have a wallet yet, you can order one and specify a small notebook/sketchbook in place of a coin purse.  In future posts we'll also tell you some ways to make your own small, flat pencil or watercolor set if you can't find one to buy!

Working Wallet

In celebration of our blog's finally being set up and fully functional after a week of very hard work, today's update shows a hard-working wallet.  (If you have any trouble with ordering from this site, please email us at weRpiecework@gmail.com.  Also use this address if you want to order with a personal check.)

NEW ultra-slim wallet

Our friend Patrick Webster from Detroit, MI, asked us to design a very compact, minimalist wallet for him.  He is currently field-testing it for us, and has sent a picture to show it in action. 

What's Inside?

When Is a Wallet More Than Just a Wallet?