A Couple Items For ME!

I don't know about you, but I rarely sew anything for myself. I mostly give away everything I make. I really wanted a couple book sleeves, and I found a great tutorial here.

Now, I haven't read a paper book in ages aside from cook books and quilting books. If it's fiction, I read on my kindle, and I read A LOT. I wanted book sleeves for my ipad, kindle and a notebook or two. I have cases on my ipad and kindle, but when traveling I keep those in my backpack, which I always crammed full. I've had things slip between the cover and the body of the case, which drains my battery. I figured a book sleeve would prevent that.  I was given some fabric that I love, and as soon as I saw it, I decided it was going to be my book sleeve.

I also had some find a word fabric with sewing words that I had purchased, and I thought it would be a fun sleeve too. 

Here are the flip sides of the cases, where the pocket is. You may have noticed that one has the button closure on the pocket side and the other has it on the plain side. That was my mistake, but even though I caught the mistake earlier enough to fix it, it didn't bother me enough to take the time to actually fix it. Another plus of sewing for myself, if I don't mind, mistakes don't matter.  

I ended up using the find a word case for my EPP project, which is already in a zipper pouch, but I put the pouch in the main pocket, and my neck light in the front pocket. I only work on my EPP project when we are travelling, and hotels usually have lousy lighting. 

I made the largest size, but if I were to make them again, I'd add an inch in each direction. I used scraps of regular fleece instead of fusible fleece or batting, and it's nicely padded, but a bit bulky so the bag is a little smaller than I wanted. I'm always at a loss on how to use scrap fleece. For years I cut it all into squares and made weighted blankets, but I'm pretty much over making those now. I have enough pellets left to make one more weighted blanket, and eventually I probably will make that, but who knows, maybe I'll have DH make some cornhole boards and use the pellets in bean bags instead. If the fleece scraps are WOF, I'll piece them into a backing, but fleece seams are thick, so I don't like doing too much piecing on a fleece backing. I'll see DD#1 later this year, so I'll show these to her and see if she'd like something similar for her country store. If I make multiple sizes I could use up a lot of fleece scraps. I could even use orphan blocks on the pockets. 

I'm already thinking about Christmas, and I thought I could make book sleeves and buy a book to put in them, and that should be a decent gift. I could make a game of it, and give myself bonus points if the sleeve matches the book. I've seen some great book fabric too, but I'd have to buy that, and I'm trying to stay low buy this year. We'll see. I still have a little time before I need to be in full blown Christmas mode.