So I recently purchased a new phone but the shop didn’t sell cases for them (seems a bit backwards right?…) and because I hate a scratched screen I decided to make a case for it myself. I mean sure, there are ones for it online but they’re just so darn ugly!
I went with felt as my material of choice; it’s easy to sew, it’s colourful and it’s soft but protective.
What I needed for this case;
– Needle
– Pins
– Thread
– Tweezers
– Ruler
-Sharp Scissors
– Felt Sheets
– Fabric Glue
– Something heavy (or a flower press)
I started out by pinning my phone in to the felt to create a pouch. I decided to do it this way, instead of measuring, to ensure it was going to be snug enough for it. I then removed my phone, drew a straight line along the pins and started sewing – it was handy to have the lines there as it meant I sewed a bit straighter than by eye. I chose to use a back stitch as it’s simple but secure and gives a neat finish.
(Top tip – reduced the amount of sewing you need to do by using a fold over of felt rather than two separate pieces.)
After sewing my pouch I trimmed off the excess felt from the edges and turned it inside out. Fortunately the phone still fitted and looked as snug as a bug in a rug!
It was now time for the fun part – decorating! Of course you could go for anything you wanted as there’s endless colours of felt, but I chose to go with Totoro since he’s an easy pattern to deconstruct in to pieces.
Once all the pieces were cut out I used felt glue to stick it all together. As you can see I added a little embroidery detail to Totoro’s leaf for extra interest. The fabric glue I have isn’t great; it’s more wet than tacky so can take ages to get things stuck together, especially thick felt. Therefore I try to press the pieces together under something heavy whilst they dry to make sure it all sticks, this time the pocket was small enough to be squashed in my flower press and it did the trick!
(Top Tip – Place a piece of paper in the pocket to prevent glue soaking through and sticking the pocket sides together.)
I gave it a good hour or so drying time in the press and ta-da one perfectly sized phone case, but Totoro was missing one final detail… Did you spot what it was, his whiskers!
This was a pretty simple and quick project, but also cheap! The felt squares were from Hobbycraft at 50p each, so in a way you are in control of how much or how little you need to spend, for my design I used 5 colours which totals to £2.50. I’m super happy with the results! Does anyone else hate how boring phone cases can be if you’ve not got an Iphone?
WonderfulWolf 