Norwegian money pouch tutorial

Surfing the net a million years ago, before I started with all the medieval stings I did do a lot of looking at other peoples work, wishing that I would find the courage to staring doing it myself.
Then I found this webpage with all of the fantastical reproductions. He had a photo of a extant medieval pouch from Norway that looked like no other purse I had seen. So when it came to me making my own money pouch a couple of years ago I knew I wanted to make that kind of purse. It says that the pouch is from late 13th to early 14th century but as money pouches does not differ that much and in “purses in pieces” Olaf Goubitz writes that the circular cut pouch is the most common type of coin purse in medieval times and that the use of them continues at any rate into the 20th century.

I have made my purse slightly smaller then the reproduction I was inspired by but as I girl I guess I have smaller hands and I did not want to have a too large pouch anyway.

I start of by cutting the leather out, you need the circular piece and also you need two long thin strips one that is 50 cm long and one that is 65 cm long, I made both mine 1 cm wide but to make it look even more as the extant purse you could cut them thinner. I have used a piece of a old leather jacker, but any soft leather will do fine.

In my paper guide I have punched holes, these I use to transfer the markings for the holes on the leather. I use a regular drawing pencil that I wet slightly, it gives just enough marks and is something I had lying around at home. You are cutting the dots of so you can use anything to make your markings with.

Then I punch all the holes out.

Take the longer leather strip and make it pointy in one end.

Start threading it through the holes.

All the way around

I round the other end of the strip of and cut a hole in the middle.

The pointy end goes through.

Pull your pouch together a bit.

As much as you want to have it open when it is finished.

Thread the pointy end on a big blunt needle.

Now we are going to do the nice wrapping around the purse.

Continue around the purse and make sure that the strip of leather lies nicely and evenly around the first round of the strip.

I did not my strip long enough, but you can easily make it longer like this, make sure that the joint end up on the “backside”, this will make it invisible.

Then when you have sewn all around the pouch.

Take the needle and go down the hole.

See, it looks like it continues all around.

Now you have the rest of the strip on the inside.

Cut it of a bit and split it in half.

Thread one end on the needle and go under the inside strip.

Make a knot and cut of the excess.

Then take the other strip of the leather, make one side pointy and thread it through the top holes.

Go all the way around.

And knot the ends.

And now the purse if finished!

The pattern is in cm, as always.

Good luck!