Tutorial: sunny iPad case (from a pillowcase!!)

Well, you don't have to make it from a pillowcase. But that's what I did, so you totally can.

You can make this case with either a ribbon tie fastening, or a slip-the-flap-under-the-thingy fastening. I ended up making it with both.

(Yep, that's a blog name change. "Pinfingers" was sort of a placeholder. I'll be sticking with this properly ridiculous video game reference from now on.)

I have an iPad, and it's like, pretty much one of the most useful things I own. I read books on it, I write on it, I work on it, I use it to listen to music and mad ancient radio plays. I definitely don't want it getting scratched or broken.

So I dropped a whole three quid on some pillow cases at a charity shop, and went to town with my sewing machine.

And sew so can you!

First of all, you have to cut the pieces out. Grab your fabric -- I used cotton for the outside and lining, and gutted the padding from an ancient broken laptop case for a bit of protection inside. You could use pretty much anything with a bit of thickness to it. The purpose is just to put some padding between your delicate device and the outside world.

You know the beautiful thing about this? You barely even need a pattern. You just need your iPad (or e-reader, or whatever) and a pen or piece of chalk. Washable pen is best, but sharpie or felt tip should also be fine, since you'll only be drawing on the seam allowance.

Put your device down on the fabric, and draw around it. Way around it. Draw your line a good few centimeters away from the edges of the device: remember, you are leaving room for both seam allowance, and the sides of your case. Your device might not be very thick but there is some depth there to allow for.

Here's a rough diagram/pattern thing to illustrate what I'm talking about:

This diagram shows the pieces for a slip cover. If you want to tie it closed instead, you don't need the thingy, but you will need a ribbon and possibly some strong glue.

ALSO! You'll notice that these pieces don't exactly match the photographed ones. That's because this was a project full of trial and error. Following the diagram will help you not make the same mistakes I did!

I recommend making the flap half as long again as the main part of the back. I made my flap quite short, and so I had to place my thingy higher than I wanted to, and even then the flap doesn't sit under it very well. If in doubt, go long.

Okay, so cut out the pieces and iron them. Except for the padding, don't iron that.

If you're sewing a slip cover thingy, fold the seams over and use the hot iron to press them into place.

And don't mind the decorative cardboard bits; they're an occupational hazard when you have a teething puppy.

Okay, now it's time to start sewing! Take the pieces for the back, and pin them together, wrong sides together. The two pieces of lining should be next to each other at this point. Sew around the flap. You can go a bit further if you want, but all we need sewn for now is the flap.

Turn the whole thing right-way out, so that the seam you just sewed is on the inside.

Shove the padding material in between the two sheets of lining. You might need to cut it down a bit more to make it fit inside the flap; that's perfectly fine.

The extra sheet of lining is there to make sure the colours on the outside aren't dulled, since my padding is this gross shade of grey.

Sewing time again! Throw down a line of stitching where you want the flap to bend over; this will help it bend in the right place, and also keep the padding from slipping out. To give it some extra stability, I went ahead and did a decorative zigzaggy stitch near the end of the flap.

Repeat the procedure with the top end of the front piece. This edge will be exposed every time you open the case, so you want it to be nice and neat.

Now put the front and back pieces on top of each other, right sides together. It's worth making sure they're nice and straight at this point.

If you're sewing on a thingy, place it in between the two sides so that it will get sewn into the seam. Fold the flap over to make sure the thingy is placed correctly. (I reiterate here that my flap was too short. If yours is longer than shown here, you're doing good.)

Now machine stitch that sonova!

Trim away the excess everything, and then turn your case right side out. If the seam is a bit gappy, you can turn it inside out again and redo the stitching as many times as you want, so long as your device will still fit inside. Shh, it's okay. No-one has to know.

Once it's the right way out and the seam is holding firm, you're done!

I was unhappy with the fastening, though, so I decided to add a ribbon to tie it closed instead. If you want a tie fastening, just take a length of ribbon, stitch one end firmly into the flap, and hot glue the other end to the front, about halfway down. (You could stitch them both, but I found it a lot easier to hot glue the second one, since the front is thick and annoying to stitch through.)

Cut the ribbon in the middle. Now you have two shorter ribbons. Tie them in a lovely bow, and cut off the excess, at an angle so that the ends don't fray too fast.

And now you really are done! Slip your iPad or Kindle or anything else into its new case, and carry it around with pride.

And whatever you do, don't let the puppy get hold of it.

Lightweight Boxing

I need to get my storage situation in order, and what better way to do that than to get a bunch of felt and make fancy little boxes?

Well, I could go down to IKEA and buy some plastic crates. But that sounds almost sensible and practical, and so I don't want anything to do with it. Let's make some boxes!

Before starting to box, I looked around a bit for interesting patterns. A lot of the ones I found called for stuff like batting, or interfacing, or sewing machine needles that punch through cardboard, and I admit it, I don't have any of those. I'm sure I could get hold of one or two for a future project, but this box I wanted to start more quickly. Patience, what's that?

In the end, I settled on a great tutorial from The B-Line. You can find it here if you want to follow along!

The short version is this: cut out big felt circles, fold them into a box/bowl shape, sew, cut. Each layer of felt shows through where you cut, for these striking lines of colour.

The blog runner over there has made some really lovely boxes using this method, big and small. They look like something you could buy from a nice home & furniture store. My first box is, uh... less professional-looking.

But it has personality!?

Because I was making such a small box, I decided to only use two layers of felt, one on the outside and one to line. I didn't want the sides to be disproportionately thick. And I figured that since the box was so tiny, they weren't about to droop under their own weight.

As you can see, I did just four sides too. The tutorial is for boxes with like six or eight sides, but that would have left my box all corner and no flat side, and I knew that I wanted to try some appliqué.

This method of box-making is great for appliqué, because once you've folded in the circles and cut away the excess, you're left with a decent amount of spare felt. There's probably less if you're making a box with more sides. But I wanted that excess for my creative misadventures.

If you're wondering what stitch I used for the sewing, the answer is: all of them. This box is a mish-mash of experiments. I went for a contrast of bright yellow thread on green for the blanket stitch that holds the thing together. On the little Dedenne... it's really anyone's guess. Backstitching hadn't occurred to me yet, genius that I am, so anything that looks like a backstitch is actually a running stitch that I doubled back on itself. The rims of the ears are a blanket stitch with a running stitch next to it, and the cheeks and paws are... um... a dedicated frenzy stitch?

I started to regret the green contrast stitch about halfway through. But by then I had done the whiskers over it, and it was too late to turn back.

That yellow hamster thing, by the way, is a Pokemon from the new XY games. Its name is Dedenne and it's definitely not a Pikachu.

Did I nail it? I think I nailed it.

Pictured here with thread, tube of beads, and seam ripper. So that's three things down, eight hundred thousand more to find storage for. Let's go!