Handmade leather e-reader cover

Recently I decided to make a gift for my hubby myself again. That was the easy part of the plan. Now I only had to figure out what I was going to make.

After spending a lot of time browsing the internet for inspirations, I stumbled over a very cool tutorial on how to sew your own iPod or E-Reader cover on this blog: leafytreetopspot. I knew that I wanted to give this a try. Here is my version of it, this time in suede and sewn by hand.

Materials used:

Paper for drawing the pattern
Suede
1 solid note pin (or more appropriate leather craft tool to pre-punch holes)
Two sheets of felt (I used craft felt)
Embroidery floss
2 sewing needles for stitching
8 binder clips

Preparing the pieces

First, I took the paper and traced around the e-Reader.
I added some space to accommodate the height of the e-Reader and also to account for the margin next to the stitches.

On the pattern I also penciled in all the holes I was going to pre-punch with the pin in order to make the stitching easier.

Using the pattern to outline the final shape of the cover, I cut out two matching pieces of leather.

On the inside, I marked the top of the rectangle to avoid any mix ups later.

Then, I pre-punched the holes through the pattern into the first piece of leather right through the pattern.

The same was done with the second piece of leather but I flipped it over so that the paper was on the outside. This ensured, that the holes matched up once the insides faced each other.

Once all holes were punched, I took a short break to let my fingers recover a little.

Putting it all together

Throughout the project I used a saddle stitch. There are various tutorials on the internet showing how to do that stitch but I found the YouTube video from Tandy LeatherFactory very handy because they show two ways of doing this stitch, both, with one and two needles being used.


First, I stitched both tops and the decorative stitches on the front.

The craft felt was cut it just a little bit smaller than the leather pieces. Just small enough that it didn't stick out but still got wedged in properly once the pieces were sewn together.

At the top I also left a little bit more space in order for the stitching to be visible.

The loose ends of the threads for the decorative stitches can be woven in before the felt is being glued on or get tied together once the two pieces got stitched together and the knot can be hidden between the edges.

Then I glued the felt in place with glue stick.

At this point it was easy to see how to put the pieces together, since there was decorative stitching on top of both pieces. I used 2 binder clips per side to prevent the pieces from moving too much.

Then the moment came when it was time to try whether everything fits as intended. To my excitement, it did. The pen could be kept outside for easier reach or tucked inside the cover next to the e-Reader. Neither way it it had the tendency to fall out.

I am excited with the end result and so was the happy recipient of the gift. :)

Frog pillow

I do have a thing for frogs, even though I do not want to touch them once they are larger than an inch or 2.5cm. :)
Last December I decided to finally make a cushion for one of my storage boxes aka foot stool and to embellish it with a nice little frog image on top.

I first was looking for a frog picture online that was suitable for tracing in Corel Draw or a similar program.
Once I had that, I traced it, printed it on some cardboard paper. Then I cut it out to get my template.
Next, I found some left over fabric I wanted to use for my frog. I then traced around the template onto the fabric and cut that out.

Then, I measured and cut the required amount of fabric for the slipcover. I folded the fabric around the foam pillow to figure out where I would like the frog to be placed. I glued the frog fabric into place with simple UHU stic glue and unwrapped the fabric. The glue does not need to hold very strong, just keeps the fabric in place while sewing all the way around the edges.  Then I zig-zag stitched all around the edges.

Once the frog was sewed on, I finished sewing together the sides for the slipcover and voila, frog pillow was done in no time.