Keychain Bus Pass Holder

Completed: October 2014
Finished Size: 4-1/8" x 2-1/2"

The finished bus pass holder

I don't have a car, so I travel almost everywhere by public transportation. I had been keeping my bus pass on my keychain in a leather holder that I bought in 1996, and it was raggedy and sorely in need of replacement. I've been playing with tablet weaving recently, so I decided to try making a tablet-woven bus pass holder.

I used 3/2 Pearl Cotton from Halcyon Yarn in ruby (#122), bali (#164), and wintergreen (#181). I only needed one 180-yd mini-cone of each color, and that was way more than enough. Pearl Cotton has a nice shiny texture which seemed like it would be great for sliding in and out of pockets and bags easily, and for not picking up a lot of debris from the street.

Guntram's Egyptian Diagonals #4

For the pattern, I used Egyptian Diagonals #4 from Guntram's Tabletweaving Thingy. Because this pattern was only 28 cards wide, and I needed 40 cards for it to be wide enough to hold my bus pass, I repeated the last two cards on each side six more times each, alternating the two colors every two cards. I replaced Guntram's light gray with the bali, his red with the ruby, and his black with the wintergreen.

Cards set up on the rigid heddle loom

Instead of stringing the entire tablet weaving setup across the room, like it seems most tablet weavers do, and leaving it vulnerable to interference by my cat, I set it up on my rigid heddle loom instead. My small loom doesn't leave much room for the yarn to twist downstream of the tablets, but it is secure and comfortable and easy to stow when necessary.

After setting up the cards on my loom, I wove for five and a half pattern repeats, or about 10", using the bali green for the weft. Since I'm new to tablet weaving, I wanted to make it long enough to give myself plenty of options for where to cut the band in case I messed up.

Finished strap (wrong side)

Finished strap (right side)

After removing it from the loom, I turned it over to check out how the pattern had come out on the reverse side of the weaving, and I have to say that I almost decided to use the reverse side of the weaving as the front, because it was so cool and geometric.

I machine-stitched across the band on either side of the best part of the weaving at 8-1/4" apart. Then I cut across the band just outside of the machine stitching, so I had a little mini section of the band a little bit longer than 8-1/4" long.

I put black binding tape over the two ends of the band, and machine-sewed them down across the band. Then I cut a thin piece of Velcro, about 1/4" wide and 2" long. I sewed the two sides of the Velcro across the ends of the band, on the inside of each end.

Then I folded the piece in half, inside out,  sewed up both side as far towards the edges as possible, and turned it right-side out. And voilà.

Fits two cards with ease, safely secured with a Velcro closure!

I didn't have a great solution for getting it on my key chain, so I just bought a tiny key loop from the hardware store and stuck it through the weaving at the edge of the holder, just underneath the binding tape, and put my keyring through it. It is working so far, although it might not wear very well over the long term. Maybe next time I'll leave space in the weaving to put in an eyelet.