iPhone case

The Monday night quilt group's 'homework' for the meeting last night was an electronic device cover. Since I share the iPad with my husband and I don't think he'd be thrilled by a patchwork cover, I decided to make another iPhone slipcover.  I liked the one I made last year so much I used the same pattern, although this time I made it as one long piece and folded it in half instead of making two separate sides like the first one. Since it was homework I figured I'd better make an effort at some piecing rather than just use one bit of fabric like last time! I've been wanting to try postage stamps for awhile, and something this small seemed like place to try them out.



The squares were 3 cm cut and 2 cm finished. And yeah, that's small! And yes the linen stretched. But actually all things considered, the squares generally matched up pretty well! I love all the reds and pinks against the linen, but couldn't resist putting in a single square of blue.



I had a typical last-step disaster though - if you look carefully at the large red and white polka dot fabric you can see the red has leached into the white, as it has on the two smaller ones next to it - and they're from different manufacturers to boot. Argh! I used water-erasable pen to draw in the quilting lines, so before I gave it a last iron I sprayed them out and ironed it wet and the red ran! I'm not sure if it would be permanent, I bet it is since I effectively set it with a hot iron, but I might try washing the cover in warm water with a colour catcher. I thought that both of those fabrics had been pre-washed but perhaps not. Anyways, not impressed!

I made it just a few millimeters too tight, so had to hand-sew the sides up to make enough room. It was meant to be sewn together along those stitching lines you can see, which this time around are simply giving a bit of structure to the edges. It's such a tricky thing making a cover just the right size - not too big or the phone will slide out, not too tight or you can't get it out in time to answer a call! I like this style of cover though, because I can pinch the fabric at the bottom and the phone slides up and I can then pull it out. I can also press the home button through the fabric and slide up the phone a bit to just see the time, and there's nothing blocking the headphone jack at the top.

So now I have two covers, although I imagine I'll still be wandering around the house saying "has anyone seen my phone cover?".

Uninterupted free time...

...such a luxury! I spent the first part of the morning collecting all the application forms and guidelines to apply for a post-doctoral grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation, but retired defeated at the thought of compiling an itemised budget for a project that is still mostly in my head! Deadline of 1st May though, so I can't put it off forever. Only 10-12% of the applications are funded, but I had one from them for my doctoral work so I'm feeling a little positive anyways.

After that I blasted through some more pleasureable projects :) Mat was bugging me to start sewing the quilt blocks last night, so I did up 5 of them. Harder than I thought, particularly because my sewing machine is definitely a metric one, so despite my ease of dealing with imperial (hem hem), my machine is not interested At. All. It has no way of reliably sewing a 1/4" seam, even if I put bits of tape all over the place to mark it. It's just about the most awkward measurement to try for because it falls about half way across the right presser foot prong. I tried putting tape in various places and nothing was particularly satisfactory. Neither were my seams. I think it'll all even out in the end, especially if I square up the blocks before sewing the strips between them.



After that I re-drafted my bunny pattern (Bunny 3.0 now). I have no idea how similar it will turn out to the original from which I took the pattern! I should probably do a test bunny to see...



And lastly I drafted up the pattern for an actual iPhone cozy using Shelly's emailed tracing of hers after making up one for me as a trial last month. I've located an iPhone to try the cozy on before sending it off thank goodness, so she can be assured of something that fits! I suppose I could attach some pencils to mine to make it wider and a bit taller too... I've also cut out the fabric but I'll leave that so that she can have a bit of a surprise when it gets to her.