Phone Sleeve

Oh, my. I have done no sewing since the last part of May. Family matters have taken top priority this month, and setting aside usual daily activities is necessary and desirable to stay focused on what's most important and reduce stress.  But yesterday, I bought a new phone, and it is just a smidge bigger than my old one so it does not fit comfortably in my old phone sleeve. Needless to say, I woke up this morning with a squirrel on my mind. Yes, I chased it and now have a nice (clean, non-shredding) new sleeve for my new phone.

Here are my old phone sleeve and my new one side by side. 

I'm going to miss the old one--that Amy Butler fabric was one of my favorites. But the new one is nice, too, and it is from a fat quarter that never seemed to fit into a quilt project. I thought I had written up the guidelines for the old one when I made it six years ago. I have lots of in-process photos, but apparently they never became a blog post. I have a few photos of the new one, but because I was so busy chasing, I didn't document the process well. I'll try to explain...

I took my phone and measured out two rectangles of fabric about an inch or so bigger than the phone. I paired them with batting scraps, and did some tiny stipple quilting to add some body. 

Here they are with one turned over so you can see the quilting better.

I put the pieces right sides together and then basted around the two long sides and the bottom short side, leaving an opening of about an inch and a quarter in the middle of the bottom. I'll explain why in a minute. I eyeballed the seam allowance to figure a fairly snug, but not binding, fit. I ended up having to take out the basting and sew again to leave just a bit more room. But that was why I basted first--to make it easy to alter it if needed. To make things extra easy, I rounded the seam at the corners.

I made a lining from two similar pieces of fabric in a solid burgundy, but I kept the long sides extra long to fold over later for a bound edge, maybe 1 1/2 inches longer? I don't know. I didn't really measure. I sewed them with the same seam allowance as the outer sleeve. 

I tested the fit by putting the lining into the sleeve wrong sides together, and shoving the phone in to get it in place. 

Then it was time to make the strap. I cut it maybe four inches longer than the main part of the phone sleeve and 3 inches wide. I made a quarter inch hem at one end. Then folded the sides in and overlapped them to make a strap about 1 inch wide. I stitched down the middle of the length of the strap to secure it and then did some stipple over the whole thing. I took the lining back out of the sleeve, inserted the raw edge end of the strap into the bottom opening of the sleeve, sewed the final seam over the basting and completed the bottom seam. I turned the sleeve right side out, reinserted the lining (wrong sides together) using the phone to get things in place, then folded over the lining twice to the outside of the sleeve. Then I hand stitched it down for a binding. Too fiddly to try to sew on the machine.) I sewed the strap to the top of the sleeve just below the binding. 

Here's how the phone sleeves (old and new) look from the back. 

They look similar here, but the strap on the new sleeve actually extends about three inches or so beyond the top edge of the sleeve.

That's because I decided to make a closure on the new sleeve to prevent the phone from accidentally sliding out, something that happened a few times with the old one. 

I found a big green and a smaller black button in my button jar, and stacked them for the closure and hand stitched them to the front of the sleeve. I folded and hemmed the end of the strap about 3/4 inch because it was longer than I wanted. Then I sewed a bit of elastic to it to close around the buttons.

Here's what it looked like from the underside.

Here's how the sleeve fits on my hand when I'm walking.

And a close up of the closure.

And the finished project.

It fills good to have a quick finish after a long sewing break. My sewing may continue to be sporadic for awhile, but I will still try to sew some blue scraps this month if I can. 

I hope you have had a good month--and I hope your squirrels make you happy.

I'm linking up this squirrely finish with Sandra at mmmquilts for DrEAMi (Drop Everything and Make it).