
…iCover…
For my birthday at the end of 2019, my family gifted me a new iPad and Apple Pencil. I had previously been using an old iPad Air that was a hand me down from my husband when he last upgraded his work iPad, and once we had started homeschooling, it became a general use device that everyone would bicker over waiting for a turn. Add in a rather hefty sized minecraft file, meaning the storage was constantly full, and the iPad situation was rather frustrating. I also had a growing itch to play with Procreate and Apple Pencil, so an iPad was an easy and logical gift we knew would get a lot of use.
I loved it. I played with digital art. I was honoured to be commissioned to design a bookmark for NovelTea Book Club. I used my new toy constantly, until, one day, the inevitable happened. It was laying on top of an open text book. We came back to the table after morning tea, and a child who shall remain nameless closed the text book and picked it up, complete with iPad inside, and I could only watch in horror as it slid out from between the pages of the book straight onto the concrete floor. In that moment, friends, I was not my best mama self, and did not respond in a way that could be described as calm and collected.
This is possibly also the point I confess that I am a terrible adult, who hates phone and ipad cases, and so I avoid them like the plague. My poor, nakey little iPad never stood a chance. I got the screen fixed, but it was a poor quality generic screen that cracked again within the month. It also didn’t play nicely with my pencil/ Finally, I gave in and sent it back to Apple for a proper screen replacement.
When it arrived back, the Pencil once again worked properly, and I began carting it to church every Sunday and bible study every Thursday. I loved my digital doodling and journaling, but it was rather bulky to haul back and forth, so the time had come to get stuck in, and sew up an iPad sleeve I had been thinking about for a while.

As well as a padded sleeve with velcro closure to keep my iPad safe in transit, I also added a small pocket to hold the pencil, which also falls under the velcro flap to stop it falling out.

The pencil pocket probably needs a tiny bit more top stitching to shorten it a bit, but even being a bit long it doens’t feel like the pencil would slip out. The sleeve design works well for me, giving me the comfort of being able to cart it around without worrying about cracking the screen, but also being able to use it without a case getting in my way.