Etch-a-Sketch iPhone Case

I noticed I had an excessive amount of felt in my fabric box so had a look through my Pinterest 'Things to make' board and remembered I pinned this Phone Cases.  How hard could these be to make??

I decided on the Etch-a-Sketch one (not that the blog title gives it away).  But first thing is first I needed to work out how to do a blanket stitch (the stitch that that holds the two main pieces of felt together, for those who are as useless as me at knowing their stitches).  Again, thanks to the awesome Pinterest site I know I had already pinned a tutorial on how to do it but did improvise a little on the starting/finishing stitch.  Blanket Stitch Tutorial

So I had a little practise (was easier than I thought) and worked out some measurements so the case fitted me iPhone 4s

I then got together everything I needed as knowing my luck I would be missing something vitally important.

 

 

I started by cutting out the main 3 parts I needed, the front, back and 'screen'.  When it came to cutting out the hole in which the grey felt would be placed I just did some guess work and hoped for the best.

 

 

         

 

I then did my pattern on the grey fabric, this was just done on my sewing machine using black cotton and a regular stitch/tension.  I considered making a proper drawing of something but knew I'd spend hours getting it right so in true Etch-a-Sketch fashion just did random lines (that's what everyone does right?)

 

 

 

Still using my sewing machine I stitched together the grey and red fabric.  Again this was a regular straight stitch and tension but just more care and attention was paid as I knew this stitch would be on show.  I tried to keep as close to the edge as I could.  On the back I trimmed down the grey fabric just decrease the risk of it getting caught or pulled around when the case was in use.

 

 

 

I then hand stitched two small white buttons to the corners using white embroidery thread and just knotted the ends at the back to secure.

 

 

 





So this is mostly done now.  Now came the bit I was most worried about....the blanket stitch that I had practised for all of 5 minutes.  Now I said it was easy (and it was) but when I actually had to use on my work I wasn't feeling so confident!  Once I got going I started thinking 'what was I worried about?' and then I came to the corner and thought 'this is what I was worried about!'.  I quickly referred back to the tutorial and was away again and was pretty impressed with my corner stitching.  The only thing about the tutorial was that how to finish up the stitching, well I couldn't understand it anyway so just had to knot the end as neatly as I could and hide it inside!

 

So....this is the finished article

 

 

 

 

 

No tips for this tutorial as it was quite easy to make and working with felt is really simple!  I have loads of ideas of different cases to make as I have tons of felt left to use in loads of colours.  But for now I'll use this one for myself as class it as my practise case.

 

On to the next project....