Phone and iPod covers

Although I have had a mobile phone since 2002 when my eldest decided that I ought to have one and set up her old one for me, I have never actually bought a new one. Since then I have upgraded via several of my sons cast offs but I have never found a phone in the shops where price and features were both satisfactory. There was no way I was going to spend £400-500 on a phone (or even £200) or take up an expensive contract.

But recently my son, wanting his old phone, that was only ‘on loan’, back, pointed me in the direction of the Nokia Lumia 620. I found that here was a phone where the screen, though smaller than the one I was using, was ‘big enough’. It also had decent internet and I hoped a better menu system. It didn’t have “Teeter” which was just my sort of game but then you can’t have everything! 🙂

Anyway, not to bore you, since my mobile operator was offering the phone I went, paid out my money and brought it home.

But every phone needs a case, especially as I didn’t wish to go to the faff of applying, badly, a screen protector.

First I tried buying one but when I got it, it was much too tight a fit for my liking, so I decided the easiest alternative was to make my own.

Those of you who have been following me for a while may remember me cutting up an old cotton top to make my peg-bag.

Well, being a horder, I kept the off-cuts in case they might ever come in handy.

I decided that I could use the sleeves to provide a soft inner lining for a phone case.

I cut a piece out of each sleeve, utilising the hem as with the peg-bag, folded them over and sewed an ‘L’ shaped seam. I then fitted one inside the other to provide a thick soft lining and sat down to crochet an outer cover.

This square from the CAL was about the right height and had fourteen rows so of course would be ideal for a ‘rainbow’ case.

I crocheted two rows in each of the standard rainbow colours and fitted it over the lining, sewed all three thickness together round the top and secured the corners through all thicknesses so they wouldn’t ruck up.

Here is a view of the back and one of the lining so you can see how it was made.

and produced this:-

Now I had bought an iPod Classic a little time before. (I know I’m spending a lot of money all of a sudden!) and I had plans to make a case for it. I noticed when making this case that it was about the same girth as the phone, just a little shorter. So when I realised that the phone cover was not quite as tall as I would have liked I decided to make this the iPod cover and make another one for the phone.

This time I used the fabric of the roll neck, made a long tube out of it, again with an ‘L’ shaped seam and folded it over double and seamed it closed at the bottom by hand, turning it the other way out to have the machine seam on the outside.

I thought I ought to have a different style of cover so remembering the interesting stitch I had seen someone using at ‘Crafty Coffee’ the previous Friday, which I was told was ‘Linen’ stitch, I decided to use this linen stitch, that is oh so easy, and similar ‘sea and sand’ colours to my cafetière, just adding the dark blue for extra interest.

Thus I made this cover:-

The covers only take a few hours to make and are very easy. You could make one in an afternoon.

But just making these covers was not enough …………………………

I am happy to be a female except for one thing – and that is that our clothing seems deficient in pockets. I much prefer pockets to using a handbag and always use a shoulder bag to at least keep my hands free.

But when it comes to listening to music on the go, if your coat doesn’t have an inner breast pocket like the one my son wears, you need an alternative.
So I decided that while I had the sewing machine out was a good time to make a neck pouch to hold my iPod or phone when out and about.

A very early post included a link to the the planning for my hexagon blanket where I made a bag for my daughter as practice. It included this photo.

As with the off-cuts from the cotton top, I have kept the gusset and now it seemed just the thing to use to make a neck pouch.

I bought some thick cotton tape to make a neck strap and found I could utilise the edge finishing of the gusset. So I cut a suitable length, sewed down the fold over at the top and sewed on the straps.

At this point I wasn’t entirely sure whether to leave the hem on the left to cover the raw edges but in the end when I had sewn the back seam, I folded it over and slip stitched it in place.

And finally sewed across the bottom along the original seam line.