Purse Necklace/Medicine Pouch Tutorial

    I have seen so many cute medicine pouch/peyote pouch necklaces on Pinterest and I think they are so cute but they're so small, what the heck would you put in them? I'm sure some people put crystals or their drugs or something like that in there, but I really wanted something more functional. I've always liked the idea of having something small to stash my ID, credit card, and some cash in when I go to a club or somewhere I don't want to carry a purse. So, I thought the medicine pouches would be cute converted into this purpose!
     So without further ado, here are steps for you to make your own:

1. Create your pattern. You can do this by cutting a long strip of paper that is a little wider than your credit cards. My pattern length and width is exactly 3 1/8 inches by 10 3/4 inches if you just want to use that measurement.

Complex stuff, right?

2. Cut your fabric. It would be useful to use a pinking shears if your fabric is prone to fray. This is not necessary with some fabrics like felt and leather. I used leather from a cheap old coat from a thrift store. This project is so small that all you need is scraps.


3. Fold up the bottom to create the pouch. You want to make sure you have right sides facing (i.e. the part you want to show on the outside is on the inside right now). At this point if you are using a fabric that frays you will want to create a hem at the top before sewing the side seams. You will not need to create a hem with fabrics that do not fray such as leather or felt.

Here is a loose weave wool and a linen shown right sides facing. I used a pinking shears to cut and created a hem on the op inside first before stitching the side seams.

4. Sew up side seams. For mine, I used a 1/8 - 1/4 inch seam allowance. I know that this is small but a big seam allowance will make your pouch look bulky and will interfere with how much you can fit in it. I used a sewing machine, but this would also look cute hand sewn.

My side seams are sewn and right sides are still facing.

5. Turn it right side out and cut/sew the flap the way you want it. To make it have that finished look, you may want to clip your corners and iron your seams open so that when you turn it right side out, you can iron it again with right sides out to have a flat polished look. Keep in mind that you cannot use an ion on leather or suede directly. I did not iron my leather pouch and it is fine, but if you really want to iron leather you will need to lay down another fabric on top of it.

This is the inside flap of one made of linen. I used a pinking shears to cut the fabric and I made a nice folded 1/8-1/4" hem.

6. Create the loop to wear around your neck. For my leather one I chose just leather cording you can get at any craft store. I sewed it on the the flap nearest the opening and just tied a simple knot in the back. The knot looks kind of bulky but I don't even feel it when I'm wearing it and you don't see it so it's nice to have it be fully adjustable for length. For the pouches I made out of fabric, I braided or weaved floss and attached it in the same manner

Here you can see how I machine stitched on the leather cording.

7. Create a closure of some kind. You can pretty much do this how ever you want. You could use a button and button hole, a button and a piece of twine to wrap around it, a bracelet closure, or just hang something heavy from the flap to keep it weighted down as I did with the leather pouch. Sometimes, simply making the front flap long is enough to keep it closed.

The flap of this pouch is enough to keep it closed while wearing.

Button and button hole closure

8. Embellish. You can put beads or embroidery on your pouch to give it that finishing touch. Sometimes it may be easier to do the embellishment first so that you do not have to worry about accidentally embroidering through multiple layers.

Note: The white and blue ones I showed have slightly different patterns than the leather one, but they still use the same ratio. I wanted one that had a fringe on the bottom so instead of folding over, I just used 2 different pieces of fabric, right sides facing, so that I basically sewed a tube. Then turned right sides out and sewed up the bottom. For the envelope one, I basically just increased the width of my original pattern and made sure it would fit around a few cards.

Early January Musings

Trying out the new format for my posts. If you're not interested in one section of the blog you can skip it!

The Science Bit
     So I'm just going to give a quick summary of some of the research I've been reading lately. It's mostly from the Journal of the American Physical Therapy Association (PTJ) since that's what I have a subscription to! There was a meta-analysis of treatments for temporomandibular disorders (AKA TMD, TMJ, jaw pain, etc) that I found interesting, especially since, in my experience, it is an area that a lot of professionals are lacking in education and experience, so I was glad to see it highlighted this month. Also, I personally like treating TMD so I was happy to see it for that reason as well. The meta-analysis included 48 studies and states that, overall, the quality of the studies is low and thus calls for more research with less biases present. However, I still like to look at the information, even if it might be biased. I think that biased information can still be useful as long as it's not intentionally falsified information and may point to some trends or at least give some indication of interventions available for a given disorder. So here are the details. For Muscular TMD: 2 studies demonstrated clinically significant changes on pain and function with postural exercises. Additionally, 4 studies supported the use of manual therapy to treat muscular TMD. Another found that cervical manipulation has immediate effects on cervico-craniofascial pain when compared to placebo intervention. For Arthrogenous TMD: Most studies that evaluated the effectiveness of jaw and neck exercises indicated positive effects, though not always significant when compared to control group. More studies showed a significant effect on pain with a combined intervention of manual therapy and exercises compared to using splints, medications, and other non-conservative methods (e.g. surgery) For Mixed TMD: 11 studies found significant effects for general exercise compared to control groups, but when compared to other conservative interventions (splinting, postural correction, acupunture) there was no significant difference. 6 studies showed mixed results about the effectiveness of manual therapy alone to treat pain and function. 2 studies reported benefits of manual therapy plus exercises, even more so than exercise alone.
Additionally adverse effects from the studies were reported. I think that the important take home from that section was that there were NO adverse effects reported from any of the any of the manual therapy or exercise based studies.

So basically it seems that from this research, that some kind of treatment is better than no treatment, but no intervention blows any other out of the water (except for maybe manual therapy alone which didn't seem to be as effective as other interventions or in combo with other interventions...Not too big of a shocker there though!).

citation for this article: Armijo-Olivo S, et al. Effectiveness of manual therapy and therapeutic exercise for temporomandibular disorders: systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of American Physical Therapy Association. 2016;96:9-25.

I apologize for any errors I made in my citation. I'm sure I did, but you get the gist! And since I'm not being graded on it anymore I really don't care haha

Also, I'm pretty excited because in last month's PTJ there was an article (co-authored by Linda VanDillon, one of my former instructors) about an upcoming randomized controlled trial about Movement System Impairment interventions. whoo!

The Introspective/Philosophical Bit
     I've been feeling unmotivated for some time now. I could say as long as years, but time is fluid and perceptions are flawed. I've been struggling with finding meaning and motivation to do pretty much anything. I feel tired and old and like doing even the things that I "want" to do are chores. If you have to force yourself to do the things that you "want" to do then do you really want to do them? I operate from a base that there is no objective morality (and ultimately that there is no morality at all - it's just a made up system to get people to act a certain way) and thus I have tried to eliminate global "shoulds" from my life. That makes everything on an individual level and the only "shoulds" you have are those that help you to meet your desires. But sometimes I can get stuck with this thinking. As one of my friends put it recently, "I no longer have a god or a universe to whisper these things to me or an institution to flog me into the correct path," so that leaves only me. And if there is no objective thing to guide me and no true right or wrong, then what is the difference between any activity that I choose to do? Why is consuming any different than creating? Why work so hard and push myself to draw or paint when I could just watch TV instead? Why climb the mountain to see the sunrise when I can kind of see it from down here? I just don't know where to find the motivation many times. It used to be easy and flowed. I desired to the things I said I wanted to do. Now I just want to want to do those things. How do you make yourself think that to see that sunrise with worth the climb?

The Crafty Bit
     My creative endeavors this month have been focused on making knotted/woven bracelets and some sewing projects. I made a little caddy for my car to hold my sunglasses and cell and other little things and I've made a few medicine pouch necklaces for holding ID, credit cards, cash, etc when I don't want to carry my purse.

This one is made of leather and I just put a wrapped stone on it so the flap would hang closed. I sewed it up with a sewing machine as opposed to by hand because it is way faster. I've made the pouch part for a few others but haven't finished the necklace part. So basically if you wanted to do this yourself all you need is the fabric you want cut into a long strip. My strip is exactly 3 1/8 inches by 10 3/4 inches. So you cut it out, fold up the bottom about 3 1/4 inches then stitch up the side seams with a 1/8 to 2/8 seam allowance (tiny, I know). Then, turn it right side out and you're pretty much done. I will likely post more on this later as i plan to make more out of different fabrics and closures.


The Reading Bit
Current books I'm reading are The Sandman: Overature and The Dark Tower Series book 6: Song of Susannah (no spoilers please!)
I've been reading the Sandman comics for about the last year and am sad to see it finally come to an end, but, who knows, there may be the potential for more. Afterall, Overature did come many years after The Wake.
And I first read The Gunslinger and started the Dark Tower series when I was in high school but stopped. Though I started it over again a little over a year ago and have been fully recommitted to finishing it. I've been reading the books aloud to my husband some nights before we go to sleep and it has been a good experience. He has already read the entire series but was interested in reading it again. He has dyslexia and is not big on reading fiction due to this so it has been a nice bonding type experience.

Also, as far as non-fiction goes I am reading The Backyard Homestead Guide to Raising Farm Animals by Gail Damerow. I am loving this book so much. My husband and I are interested in homesteading and this is a great book. It's so detailed but simple to understand for someone who knows little about farm animals. It's also not a boring read filled with highly technical stuff and its actually funny in a few places. So if you are at all interested in homesteading or owning an animal I would highly recommend it.