Netbook or iPad Case Tutorial

Yea, that's right, I used an old cloth diaper and some fabric to make a sweet, protective case for my netbook! What do you think?? I'll do my best to help you follow what I did...

First off, I wanted to use something as padding inside the material, to keep my netbook nice and safe. My motto is, look around and utilize what you've already got on hand. So, my options were an old terry cloth hand towel, or a cloth diaper. The diaper was nice and thick, and it just happened to be the exact size that I needed!

Step 1:

 Measure your iPad, laptop or e-reader. My netbook was 11" wide and this diaper was 14" wide. This was almost exactly the size I needed (it was a little close), so I'd say leaving yourself an inch (maybe an inch and a quarter) on each side for seam allowance should work.

Step 2:

Move your computer out of the way and fold your fabric over whatever you are going to use for padding (in my case, the diaper). Cut the fabric out so it covers the padding like a book, leaving the fold intact and cutting around the other 3 sides as needed.

 Step 3:

Turn the fabric inside out and place padding on top. Sew together along both long sides and the bottom, then turn right side out.

 It should now look like this, with the padding sewn neatly inside

 Step 4:

With better planing, there was probably a better solution for this next step, but I was totally on a time crunch and just made this up as I went along! I ended up with an ugly raw edge on the top half, and not enough extra fabric to do much with it. So, I found some wide ribbon and sewed it on, nice side facing in, then turned it over.

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Step 5:

Going back to this picture, you can see how the plan is to lay it all out and sew the two sides. This picture here is only lacking the ribbon which was just added. I sewed this flap down, so it would lay nice and make the next step easier. The next step: turn inside out (folded so the nice side is now on the inside) and sew each side together. I sewed this part by hand because it was too thick at this point for my sewing machine to handle.

Step 6:

I added some burlap and rickrack embellishments, sewed on a button and this string to secure it closed.

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