Everyday Modern ~ sensationally beautiful modern living

Since the begin­ning of my men­tal enslave­ment to the Kin­dle, I have spared no expense to my pre­oc­cu­pa­tion.  Rear­rang­ing the liv­ing room to invite a more read­er­ly atmos­phere?  No prob­lem.  Pur­chas­ing new cab­i­netry to accom­mo­date said rearrange­ment?  You got it.  Spend­ing $45 on a name brand leather case to house my object of obses­sion?  Who would­n’t?  Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I have learned that all design­ers do not take the endear­ment of the Kin­dle as seri­ous­ly as they should and will prey upon junkies of the writ­ten word with reck­less abandon.

Who might these vil­lain­ous so-called design­ers be?  None oth­er than the leather case­goods divi­sion at Ama­zon.  After a mere six months of use, my lov­ing­ly pur­chased Kin­dle case fell apart due to faulty design.  So what is a cre­ative indi­vid­ual do?  Show those bastages who has the supe­ri­or mind and cre­ate some­thing bet­ter, which is pre­cise­ly what I did.

Get down to it:

Exhib­it A — Mea­sure the fabric

Step 1: Mea­sure out the fab­ric.  Rather than list spe­cif­ic dimen­sions, I find it eas­i­er to just use the Kin­dle as a size ref­er­ence.  As ref­er­enced in Exhib­it A, I mea­sured out about a half inch on both sides and the bot­tom.  To fig­ure out the height of the rec­tan­gle, I fold­ed the fab­ric about so that it left about 3/4 of an inch to the top of the Kin­dle (con­fused?  Check out Exhib­it C to see what I’m talk­ing about), and then fold­ed some of the fab­ric over the top of the kin­dle to the length I want­ed the top flap to over­lap on the pouch.

Exhib­it B — Cut­ting it out dou­ble time.

Step 2: Cut it Out.  Once you have the dimen­sion for your fab­ric, cut two of them out.  I sup­pose you could do a sin­gle lay­er pouch, but I pre­fer two just to add that extra bit of cush­ion to pro­tect my beloved Kindle.

Step 3: Stitch it.  I do not have a pho­to of this step because I was an idiot and did­n’t do it.  How­ev­er, that is why you are read­ing this, to avoid mak­ing the same mis­takes as this poor sap.  So any­way, you will want to run a stitch across the bot­tom of the rec­tan­gle.  If you refer to Exhib­it B, you will want to stack the two pieces of felt and then stitch right under where the Kin­dle is placed in the image.  Once you have the seam, trim up the bot­tom edge so it’s not all ghet­to with mis­matched lengths of fabric.

Exhib­it C — Lay it out before you sew

Step 4: Mea­sure Twice, Stitch Once.  Lay out the fab­ric and place your Kin­dle in the mid­dle.  Now that you’ve evened up the bot­tom seam, fold it up so about 3/4 of an inch of the Kin­dle is show­ing, then pin it on the sides so you know where it is sup­posed to fold when you bust out the heavy machinery.

Exhib­it D — Sew the perimeter

Step 5: Don’t be a dum­b­ass.  As this is the tricky part of mak­ing the pouch, I will point out all the mis­takes that I made in hopes of divert­ing my faith­ful read­ers from doing the same.  As is clear­ly evi­denced in Exhib­it D, there is real­ly only one seam that runs around the perime­ter of the pouch, but before you run off and sew it all up, you need to just chill for a minute.

Before you stitch, you need to lay out the fas­ten­ing loops (you’ll notice there are no pho­tos, because I did­n’t do this cor­rect­ly either).  Cut two small loops of the elas­tic cord, big enough to go around the but­tons, but small enough to close it up snug.  Pin the elas­tic between the two pieces of fab­ric at the top, and make sure that they pro­trude from the fab­ric the same dis­tance or else your pouch will look stupid.

Once you get the elas­tic pinned, then, by all means, stitch away.  When you are sewing, make the stitch­es as square as pos­si­ble (you’ll notice that I suck at sewing so my seams are super crooked and look like crap).  Remem­ber that you will be trim­ming off the excess ghet­to bits, so focus more on mak­ing the seams square with the bot­tom and mid­dle flap edges of the pouch.  I also like to make seam at the top cor­ners round­ed, and do a dou­ble track stitch over the elas­tic loops to ensure that they are secure.

Exhib­it E — Trim it up nice.

Step 6: Trim off the crap­py part.  This is pret­ty self explana­to­ry.  As you are already an expe­ri­ence crap trim­mer from Step 3, just use your new­ly acquired skills to do the same on the remain­ing three edges.  You’ll note in the fin­ished pho­tos that I cut the top cor­ners into round­ed shapes to match the round­ed seams.  It looks quite fetch­ing when done right.

Step 7: But­ton it up.  You’re near­ly fin­ished, all you have to do is sew on the but­tons. Put the Kin­dle inside the pouch and fold the top flap over.  Locate the but­tons based on where the loops hit the low­er por­tion of the pouch.  Make absolute­ly sure that the but­tons are lev­el with one anoth­er, and the bot­tom of pouch.  I did­n’t make absolute­ly sure and it looked ultra-mega ter­ri­ble, requir­ing me to re-sew the but­tons.  Sewing but­tons sucks, so just do it right the first time.

Exhib­it F — F is for Final­ly hav­ing a badass Kin­dle case!

Step 8: Make fun of all your Kin­dle tot­ing pals.  Now that you have a far supe­ri­or Kin­dle case, go make fun of all your friends who have the lame ass Ama­zon Kin­dle cov­er that will inevitably fail with­in six months!  Thanks for read­ing — as always, please feel free to share my work, just please give me cred­it when you do.  Cheers until next time!