…blogtober day 12 :: all the sleeves…

It doesn’t take a lot to amuse me, most of the time. A good pun, especially one delivered deadpan by my teenager, can have me in hysterics. Most recently, I’ve been tickling my own funny bone with a pun of a project.

A laptop sleeve. Sewn using typewriter fabric.

I’m not sure what makes me smile more, the cute fabric, or the juxtaposition of the technologies. I came across the fabric during one #saturdaynightcraftalong scroll, when someone shared their project. As soon as I saw it, I fell in love with it, and knew the perfect project for it.

Somehow, I’ve managed to find myself treasurer of one committee, and secretary of two others. Between taking minutes directly on my laptop, and having to get a second log in to approve committee payments, my computer is out and about running errands almost as much as I am. Ever since I’ve bought it, I’ve intended to sew a sleeve for it, rather than buying one, and just never gotten around to it. With the increasing need to actually take it places, it was time to get one made.

I went for a search for the fabrics in my usual spots, but didn’t have any luck finding all three colour ways bailable together except for one shop, new to me. I try where possible to support my SNCAers, but in the end I decided to be pragmatic and grab them at this new shop. I wasn’t entirely convinced which one I wanted to use, so had pretty much set my mind to grab all three, in the canvas substrate. Knowing me and my project preferences, I knew whichever I chose would always be put to good use. Hilariously, having ordered and received my fabric, I went on to post my initial blogtober post on instagram. One of my lovely SNCAers commented with a link to her blog…which turned out to be the shop I’d bought from!

I ended up picking the pink background for my sleeve. Pink isn’t a colour I tend to use a lot, so it was appealing for the novelty factor as much as anything. When I held them against the denim I would be using for the reverse of the sleeve, the pink seemed to work better with the particular shade of my current length of denim. I could also see myself using the mustard and teal for a wider range of projects than the pink, so thought I could leave them aside for down the track. Once I had the body of the sleeve cut out, I looked at what I had left, thinking about added a fussy cut pocket on the reverse. The layout of the fabric though would lead to a lot of wastage, and I was also concerned about the pocket ending up too large, since it was mainly to hold my charging cable. In the end, I decided to use part of a typewriter from the side of a piece, and create an offset, peekaboo pocket.

As expected, it didn’t take long before the mojo came calling to find a use for one the remaining two fat quarters I hadn’t used for my laptop. With the computer sorted, it only made sense I make a co-ordinating sleeve for my iPad, really. If there’s one thing I love, it’s a good matching set.

It’s not just the aesthetics though. Back in January of last year, I made myself a cover for carting my iPad and Apple Pencil back and forth to church. That one I designed to open on the long side, with a little pouch for my pencil, and a velcro closure to keep everything held safely together. Working from scratch, that’s how I thought it would work best for how I would be using the cover. The reality is, most of the time, the children would borrow my iPad and not return it to the cover. Heck, getting them to return it to gadget stand was enough of a challenge. And let’s not get started on what they thought was an acceptable battery level to leave me with. Remember back in the day (I’m going to age myself here), you would pull out a video and the last bugger hadn’t rewound it? My kids returning a flat iPad is the 2022 version of that. With no iPad to hold the case taut, the pencil would wriggle it’s mischievous way out of it’s cozy little pouch. Pencil off on an adventure, iPad flat, and the charger more often than not having also having gone walkabout, despite me adding washi tape and showing everyone that THIS charger is mine, and not to be touched by small people.

The time had come, the walrus said, to speak of many things. Like a new iPad cover, that better suited how I (or more accurately, my kids) used my iPad. It didn’t hurt that the typewriters are much cuter than the basic fat quarter I’d picked up at our local fabric shop.

I chose to go with the mustard colour way for this sleeve – coordinating but not matching. Instead of a side seam peekaboo, I shifted the pocket in off the edge, but kept it offset, and just a fragment of the typewriter. While the laptop sleeve had sewn up quite quickly in time to take with me on my trip, this time around it took a little longer. After a busy morning in town, we had come home, whipped around our chores, and the children were off playing. I decided on a whim this would be today’s project, and wanted to get it done and finished before I had to head back into town for soup kitchen duty. In my haste, I decided to pull the measurements off my existing cover and add seam allowance, rather than do the wise thing and measure the iPad and calculate from scratch. It meant my first attempt was too loose, so out came the unpicked. Top stitching removed, turned back inside out, I adjusted one side seam. Still too loose. Turn again, take in the other side seam, test again. It fit, but the bulk of the now wider seams was making it a fraction too snug. Turn. Trim. Turn. Test. Bingo.

I love and adore the end result, especially seeing them in a pair like this. The pencil is snug as a bug in its new little pocket – no more adventures! The laptop sleeve has been a joy to use the last couple of weeks, so I can imagine my iPad sleeve will make me similarly happy to use. Because life’s too short for boring iPad covers.

My apologies to all you lovely folks who have subscribed to receive each email by post, for the random creative writing post this morning – if you check the date you will see it is from 2014! I had turned it to private to tweak a couple of errors, and then when it turned public, it went out on the email list again automatically. I am sorry for that!

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