M&M Coin/Mask Holders
While I was spending MANY an hour browsing through eBay, I came across these 3 beauties. The seller had listed all 3 for only £2.99! As you will come to know, I’m a huge fan of bold imagery so I had to snap up these little beauties. Knowing that these beanies were being delivered was almost as exciting as having a packet of M&Ms to get through. I instantly fell in love with the green lady character (who is known as ‘the sexy one’) and I thought she would make an amazing bag charm. When the toys arrived in the post I thought that not only would they make an amazing bag charm, but why not make them, quite easily, into little coin/mask holding bag charms!
What I used to create 1 coin holder:
small soft toy
a closed-end zip in the matching colour of the toy (I used a 10cm zip)
matching thread
lining fabric in a matching (or clashing) colour
scissors
a sewing needle
a keyring
3cm of ribbon in each colour
a sheet of paper
pins
a carabiner
lobster claws (I used x2 red and x1 blue)
a pencil
a stitch unpicker
The first step I took was to unpick around 12cm of the top seam and pull out the stuffing of the soft toy. I unpicked around 2cm more than the length of the zip in order to place the zip nicely in the unpicked seam, and work around it a little easier. I did this with each of the characters. With the red M&M, I wanted to include 2 red lobster claws to attach the gold chain to. To do this I wrapped a 3cm length of ribbon around the sealed end of the lobster claw and hand-stitched very close to the metal, I made the ends of the ribbon longer than needed in order to easily be able to catch them in the seam.
I then attached each zip into the open seam, also attaching the ribbon where necessary. I did this by hand as I found it much easier than using a sewing machine as there wasn’t much seam allowance on the soft toy. I opened and closed the zip to move the bulk of the zip away from where I was stitching, ensuring to close the zip to make sure it matched up on each side.
Once the zips were sewn in and matched up perfectly (which can take a few attempts) I then drew around each character on to a sheet of A4 paper to get the pattern piece for the lining. I added a 5mm seam allowance to each pattern piece as this was around the amount the soft toys had. I decided to sew together the lining pieces on the sewing machine to ensure that stitch was strong and even, leaving a gap of 12cm along the top edge and 8cm along the bottom edge. I then turned the character inside out and pinned the lining along with the zip tape and hand-stitched very similar to the way I stitched the zip to the soft toy. Once done I was able to turn the piece the right way using the 8cm gap I left open in the lining to squeeeeeeeeeze everything through. Using the sewing machine I then closed the 8cm up and pushed the lining into the character and that was it complete!!!!
Do this with each character and BAAMMMMMMMMM you're done! I decided to make each character slightly different, so I made the blue M&M into a keyring/coin/mask holder, the green M&M into a bag charm/coin/mask holder, and the red into a cross body accessory/coin/mask holder.