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.

The Loch Ness Plushie

This wasn't on my to-do list. So of course I wanted to make it instead of, say, that skirt or my trouser cuffs. Or anything practical whatsoever.

But man, can you blame me? It's a bright pink Nessie!

Isn't it too cute to refuse?

I've been collecting plushie patterns over on my Pinterest, and now at last I've manned up and made one. It was a learning process. And an excuse to break out my sewing machine again, safely upstairs where the puppy couldn't try to eat the wires.

She may look sweet, but if you seem remotely chewable she's a killing machine.

Anyhow, the Loch Ness Monster. I found the pattern over here on PickledOkra, where the blog runner has adapted it from a super cute knitting pattern. So of course I had to make it. I'm pretty sure I would never forgive myself if I passed up the chance to sew a tiny plesiosaur.

PickledOkra has very kindly provided a free pattern to print, but a) ink is expensive and b) I wanted to resize it anyway, so instead of printing I copied the pattern pieces freehand onto some paper. The shapes are fairly simple, so it worked a treat. And since my felt came in a4 sheets, drawing on a4 paper meant it was easy to make sure I would have enough fabric.

Eventually, after cutting out all the pieces and pinning them together, it looked something like this:

...which, if you follow me on Facebook, you might have already seen. But it's all unmapped territory from here, folks.

I decided that the solid pink was a bit boring, and some spots would liven it right the hell up. So I gave that pink some spots. Stuffed spots.

I broke out the blanket stitch to attach them. I'm getting quite proud of my blanket stitching; I still screw up and make it look shoddy sometimes, but that's already getting rarer. I think it's my patience I need to work on as much as anything else.

To make the spots, I cut out largish circles of yellow felt, then blanket stitched each one onto the right side of the pink felt. Before I was done stitching round the circumference of a spot, I grabbed a bit of stuffing (I got a massive bag from a haberdashery for £1.60 back in uni) and pushed it in with the blunt end of my seam ripper. You could use a pencil, the bottom of a felt tip, heck, anything thin enough to fit through the hole but wide enough to push the stuffing into place. Then I finished sewing up the gap using the same blanket stitch. Voila. Repeat.

I swear this project was charmed, by the way, because I somehow managed to have felt, thread, and the right size buttons all in perfectly matching yellow. It just all came together and worked. Is this how sewing professionals feel all the time??

Once I'd stitched on the spots and eyes, I machine stitched the heck out of the flippers, turned them inside out, and wrinkled them up. Then I put a few messy stitches through the ends to keep those wrinkles in place.

Those finished flippers went straight inside my newly re-pinned-up body.

Re: sewing the body: I machine stitched the line of the spine, including where it curved around the head. But when it came to the other two body seams on left and right, touching the green belly, it wasn't so simple. You see those flippers? You see where they're folded over? That's like, five plus layers of felt shoved on top of each other, sandwiching a bunch of thread. Ain't no sewing machine needle got time for that.

So I hand sewed the other two seams with a nice, semi-amateurish back stitch. And on the right hand side I left a gap between flippers, so that I could turn the thing right side out (bit pointless if I can't do that) and then stuff it (ditto what I just said).

And the turning inside out went... uh...

It... it went.

I can see the head! KEEP PUSHING!!

Congratulations. It's a deflated plesiosaur.

Now that I was done with the harrowing experience of shoving its face out from the inside, I went ahead and stuffed the plushie. I used my seam ripper again, along with a pen, to shove the stuffing evenly into those hard-to-reach corners.

Then I attempted to close the gap with an invisible seam. But I should note that "attempted" is really the operative word here.

You -- yes, you there reading this -- I don't know if you sew, so let me explain. You can skip this paragraph if you don't need it. See, all the other stitching, when I turned the plushie inside out, ended up on the inside. No big, ugly stitches, just nice clean seams (or as clean as they can be when I'm still a bit shaky on sewing in a straight line). Brilliant, right?

Well, yes, until I have to close the hole. Then I have to replicate that nice clean smooth seam -- while stitching from the outside.

Okay, seams 101 is done, you can zone back in now if that was all old news to you. :)

I stumbled across a tutorial not so long ago which seemed straightforward enough. But when I came to try it out, I didn't quite get the 'invisible' part of the invisible seam. I'll be frank, it's not the most invisible thing I've ever seen. It's downright visible, in fact.

With hindsight, and a bit more self-discipline, I probably should have tested the thing on some scrap fabric to make sure I understood the instructions. But by this point I was impatient to finish the plushie and admire the fruit of my labours. Welp. My loss.

It looks rather good otherwise, though, doesn't it?

Did plesiosaurs... have such large flippers in back...? Uh -- look, a distraction!

Yes, look at this! I thought a little bow around its neck would be cute, so I fashioned one based on this picture tutorial. It was really crazy simple to cut out the shapes freehand and then use wee tiny stitches to fix them together.

And it totally does look cute!

 

Okay, I have said "cute" about five hundred times too many in this post. I am officially cuted out. Goodnight everyone, and I hope you have enjoyed seeing this Scottish myth immortalised in stylish magenta.