Monday, November 12, 2012

iPad Cover

I made my iPad cover last week and I've been using it for a little while now.

 

I used Tablet Case Tutorial | sew in harmony. I found it when I had the Transformer tablet, because this tutorial has sizes for many different tablets. I would have had to change quite a few things for the transformer as I wanted to include the keyboard. However I don't need to do that with the iPad as the keyboard I got for it has it's own cover and it can't be removed from it.

The tutorial worked out much better than I thought it would, as I was worried it wouldn't be safe enough. The tutorial called for two fabric corners and two elastic corners (I don't trust elastic), were I would have preferred four fabric corners or a surround for the tablet. However the cover has removable boards, so it wasn't really practicable. The fabric corners turned out really tiny, but sufficed to say, I have not lost my iPad out of it yet.

I might have been able to sew four fabric corners, as long as the board was added after the iPad and sewn into the corners to the pocket. If anyone decides to try that, please let me know.

The reasons I decided on using this pattern, other than it being a free (for personal use only) tutorial, is it has the board inside it, so you can prop up your iPad and view it better. The boards are removable, so I can wash the cover when it gets dirty. I say when, because I used yellow, white and light coloured fabrics, of course it will get dirty!

Before I made this it felt like my iPad was naked, exposed and fragile. Now it feels like its is safe and protected. I love that it's like a book, it feels great to carry around and secretly it fulfils a childhood wish of mine. When I was kid, I used to pretend my old hard cover book of Little Woman was a book with a computer inside. Just like the one Penny had in the cartoon Inspector Gadget :-)

I discovered too, that just having the friction of fabric on fabric (my pants) means I can sit on the couch with my legs up and prop it up on my legs :-) It is so multifunctional.

I did make a change to the closer. The tutorial calls for a button and elastic to keep it closed, I decided on sewing a piece of elastic into the seam at the back of the case, that went from the top to the bottom. It closes so easily by wrapping the elastic around the front of the cover and to open I just wrap it around to the back.

As you can see, I went with a patchwork for the front cover. I used a lot of Joel Drewberry's Herringbone in Pond, Pat Bravo's Oval Elements in Papaya Orange, Lizzy House Outfoxed Foxglove in Pink, Amy Butler's Full Moon Polka Dot in Lime, my favourite Tula Pink's Parisville Cameo in Sky and lastly Dena Fishbein's Taza Tarika in Yellow.

It wouldn't matter too much if you used a pattern material that had no direction, but when it came time for me to sew the spacing for the board pockets, I realised that, the iPad really needed to go on the right side, so when I open and close it, I wouldn't be picking up the iPad up with the cover and plonking it down. I'm just so used to closing a book so it's cover is facing up, that I would be all messed up if I put the iPad on the left side. However I had the problem of the cameo print that I used in the front of the cover. With the two pockets being on the front cover, this meant I had to sew though the middle of the print! So I decided to camouflage the stitches, by stitching more! I faux quilted the front cover. I had been undecided whither or not to add some batting to the front. There is some batting inside the cover, and in the end I decided not to add more, as I had already cut my fabric and it probably would have thrown the calculations out.

So overall, I'm really happy with how it turned out. I might add something later, like a little pocket to put a cloth to wipe the screen with, or I could just put it behind the the tablet. I'll see how I go.

Till next time

Mother Dragon

P.S I'm still loving blogging on my iPad with Blogsy, I really can't recommend it enough.

 

No comments: