Tutorial :: Kindle Case

You might recall from last year, my in-laws rock at gift giving. Well, they rock at a lot of things, and it’s one of life’s major suckages that they live on the opposite side of the country from us.

This year, they sent me this:

I love it. I actually like having to wait for things now… for the kids to get out of practice, or for my car to be serviced. I have my Kindle in my purse & I whip it out and enjoy the wait. But having it sloshing around in my purse was worrying me, so I decided to make a cozy little protective case for it.

I started with a wool sweater from Goodwill that I’d felted.

I measured my kindle’s width & height and added an inch and a half to each measurement. It was 4-3/4″ wide and 7-1/4″ tall, so I cut out 2 pieces from the sweater, each measuring 6-1/4″ by 8-3/4″.

Then I cut out 2 pieces of coordinating cotton fabric that same size for the lining, and 2 pieces of heavy fusible interfacing that were just 1/2″ taller & wider (i.e. 5-1/4″ by 7-3/4″). Iron the interfacing to the wrong side of the cotton fabric.

(Sorry some of these pictures aren’t so great… one of the dangers of crafting late at night.)

Take the 2 pieces of sweater, put the right sides together, and sew them together down one side, across the bottom, and up the other side with 1/2″ seam allowance. In other words, you’ll have a pocket with the top open when you’re done. Trim close to the seam allowance and turn it right side out.

Put the 2 pieces of lining fabric right sides together and sew them together down one side, and partway across the bottom. Stop and leave an unsewn gap along the bottom of the lining approxiately 2-1/2″ long. Resume sewing across the remainder of the bottom and up the other side. Leave the lining fabric “pocket” wrong side out when you’re done.

You’ll also need a button. Any button will do, I just dug one out of my button jar.

Take a piece of the lining fabric and cut it 4 times as wide as you want the final width of the button loop to be, and 4 times as long as the width of the button. Fold it in half and sew it together with 1/4″ seam allowance. The ends will be open. Turn it right side out through one of the ends, and press with the seam centered on one side. Fold it in half again and edge stitch. Then make a loop out of it. You’ll have to sort of figure out how big of a loop you need to go around your button. You want it to be secure, but don’t make it too tight.

Stick the sweater “pocket” down inside of the lining “pocket”. Line up the top edges and pin together. Take your button loop and stick it between the sweater layer & the lining layer, with the top of the loop pointing down towards the bottom of the pockets. Pin it in place. If you’ve done it right, all you’ll see is the tail end of the loop sticking up from between the layers. This is what it looks like before you sew:

Sew around the top of the pockets. Then pull the sweater pocket out through the gap you left in the bottom of the lining pocket:

After you get the sweater layer pulled through, sew the gap in the lining pocket shut and then push the lining down into the sweater pocket. Sew the button on, and you’re done!

Now I can carry it around in my purse without the screen getting scratched!

You can follow these same steps for any generally flat, rectangular device. The girls want me to make holders for their iPods now. However I think for anything smaller I wouldn’t use a sweater. It would get too bulky for small items. I think for theirs I’ll use cotton fabric for the outside and flannel for the lining.

1 year ago:

Iowa Food Coop, January

Winter

Making lemonade