IPad/Tablet PC cover

 My boyfriend/partner/lodger (to use a Sean Lock joke) got me a tablet for Christmas and I am totally addicted to it already, I think the screen will do my head in a bit though- I hate seeing finger prints in it so I constantly want to wipe it down!

I already take it with me everywhere; I have a Kindle on it so it's really useful to have when I'm doing a sleep-over at work (for those of you who don't know what that is and am wondering how I can get away with skiving off, sleeping and reading - I'm not on shift, just an extra body in the building in case the waking night staff need a hand.) The problem was that I don't have a carry case for it so I have to lumber it about in the HUGE box it came in. Being a hoarder I have plenty of things kicking about the house that I can use to create a case, so I went about it.

The materials I used were; fabric, wadding, thread, lace edging, velcro. The tools I used were scissors, sewing machine and darning/quilting foot, sharpie, pins.

I measured three times the width of my tablet and the length adding about 1 1/2 inches allowance. Be very generous with allowances as this will get whittled down quite a bit throughout the process.

Cut two of these rectangles out of your fabric and one out of the wadding then arrange the fabric right sides together with the wadding on top and pin

Sew the two short sides and one long side together. I used a quilting foot on my machine, this sits above the fabric rather than pushing it down as a regular foot does which is really helpful when using several layers as they don't bunch up. Trim the sewn edges, cut the corners off to help with turning back out. trim the wadding on the open side about 1/2 inch. Turn right way out and iron (be sure it's on a low setting so as not to melt the wadding!) Press and sew the last side closed. You can top stitch all the sides for a neater finish if you want.

Make sure everything's fitting well, work out where the velcro will need to be, pin in place. You can also decide where any other embellishments will go on the final design. Sew these on first then sew the pocket up. Be careful when sewing the pocket - there are loads of layers here and your machine may not like it, you may need to hand crank the thickest bits.

These are the two embellishments I chose, as you'll see in the end result I decided to draw on the bird as well as I liked how it looked on the flower. Now, a word on applique - traditionally these are hand sewn so you can't see the stitches but I quite like seeing the zig-zag stitches, it adds a rawness which I think is a nice juxtaposition against the floral fabric I used. I'm into seeing the working (just like a maths teacher, but that's where the similarity ends!)

Lastly it's neatening up the loose threads. To do this I thread these loose ends through a needle and sew them in between the layers of fabric. Here's the end result. I think the bird side needs something else, but I'm not sure what. Maybe a sketch or something? But yey! now my tablet has somewhere to go!