I was recently traveling with my mom and she brought along her fancy, new tablet.  She had it stowed in a little bag but I got to thinking she could use some sort of soft, protecting cover to keep it safe and maybe that cover could come from me and be a nice Christmas gift!  (I’m always thinking brilliant thoughts like that.)  So I went online to get some ideas.  I was thinking it should be more of a pocket than a sleeve and I found just the thing and a wonderful tutorial at www.u-createcrafts.com.  The tutorial is actually made by a blogger at Scattered Thoughts of a Crafty Mom.

My problem with this project was that I didn’t actually have the tablet here to work with and I didn’t want to ruin the surprise by nonchalantly asking my mom for the dimensions of her new tablet.  I went online and found the type of tablet (I think) and made a cardboard model of it.  Armed with that model; I tried to follow the instructions on the tutorial.

I found some fun travel fabric and put it together with some red fabric (Mom’s favorite color) but here is where I ran into trouble.

This fabric is directional and I wanted the pictures to be facing up when she looked at it or opened/closed the tablet cover.  I’m not sure why I had such a hard time but twice I sewed it upside down so that the open end that’s supposed to be the flap produced an upside down image.  The second time, I just closed it up and used a seam ripper to open the other end and put in the elastic for the loop closure.

It was a pretty easy project with most of the effort being the quilting.  I cheated with the criss-cross quilting since I have a weird metal thing that hooks to my machine and I just adjust it to the distance I want and then keep it in the previous sewn line.  It keeps me from having to draw all those lines.  I just have to draw one line in each direction.  I’m just praying that my mom’s tablet actually fits in here since I’m guessing that my state-of-the-art cardboard tablet is probably a little thinner than hers.  I tried to add a little extra on the measurements but I think the tablet should fit fairly snug.

Another Christmas gift finished!