In the bag - Ta-dah!

LOOK!

My iPad cover.  What I made.  All by myself.  Gosh, how clever am I!

I would like to tell you it was nothing really, just something I knocked out in an afternoon.  But this has been tormenting me for about a month now.  I even got up early one Saturday recently because I thought I'd cracked it, only to find myself ripping it apart again in frustration later in the day.

Never one to make it easy on myself, I didn't think to look up a pattern.  Or at least I did, but I didn't think any pattern would accommodate the beautiful piece of fabric with the car that I wanted to form the front flap, and I knew if I found a pattern I wouldn't be able to adapt it, so I ploughed on.  To give you an idea of how many times I re-did this, I went through a whole spool of thread...  I know, right?

And now that I've got it sorted, I can't believe how stupid I was being all along.  And of course the answer was so simple, and had been staring me in the face.  All I needed to do was to follow the way I made my bags (sort of).  I knew I didn't want any exposed seams on the sides because they would come apart after awhile, but I must have tried every possible variation of folding and stitching before it dawned on me that I needed an inner pocket sewn right sides together and left that way, and an outer pocket sewn right sides together and then turned inside out so that the right sides faced out.  And then the inner pocket could, well, sit inside the outer pocket.  Genius!

That only left the flap, and I knew I only had this little piece of fabric to work with so necessity made that bit quite straightforward in the end.

So, there you go - my first ever made up made thing, ever.  Isn't it pretty?  Do you like it?  Do you really?  And doesn't my iPad look the business tucked away in there?

If I'm honest, I will tell you that in fact I didn't make the pockets high enough, so that when the ipad is inside, the flap comes over but you can't see all the car, which niggles me.  But I still love the colour combination and the travel motif (nothing if not obvious) and the general feel of the thing.  And did I mention that I made it?  Me.

And just in time - I am off on my travels tomorrow (Afghanistan and Lebanon - not sure how I feel about that...) and will be out of touch for a week or more.  Will be thinking of you all and looking forward to hearing how you're getting on.

C.x