Santa's Post-Christmas Sewing Sweat Shop: Day Four

It took me years and years of trial efforts to work out that there is absolutely no knitting triumph I can achieve that my husband will think is worth being woken up for.

~ Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Only 2 Christmas gifts left to go!  Today I focused on the laptop sleeve - the dimensions depend, obviously, on the size of the laptop.  That means that I had to pester my friend to measure her laptop for me...  

And without looking at the instructions, I assumed it was length and width that I needed, but the instructions actually wanted a circumference, so after she measured it once, I had to send her back to measure it again!  :(

Anyways, eventually we got the numbers sorted out and it was time to begin the cutting and sewing.  

Step 1: Find a cat to help you cut the batting to size...  

(Note that the book doesn't explicitly call out this step, but Oliver felt it was implied...)  

The next step is to make the flap - which does not have batting inside.  

But it does have hook & loop tape on one side.  Note that I remembered to add the tape BEFORE stitching the 2 pieces together, so the stitching doesn't show on the other side.  Yay!  :)

Next I got to practice my "mad" quilting skills on the body of the sleeve.  (Mad...  bad...  It's a thin line...)  ;)

As before, I started with a large X that connects the corners, but because the sleeve is so large, I divided each edge into thirds (instead of in half) and stitched 2 parallelograms on the face.  

After adding the other half of the hook and loop tape to the sleeve and my label to the flap, it was time to fold the sleeve fabric in half (right sides together) and stitch the side and bottom seams.  

The instructions suggest covering the 2 inner seams with bias tape - I thought that was a nice touch.  

Although I'm not sure how I was supposed to handle the double-bound corner and whatever I did wasn't right - so that one bottom corner is a bit rounded, instead of a sharp point.  :(

From here, I was just a hop, skip and a jump from being done.  :)

Attach the flap...  

... and add bias tape to finish the top edge.  Ta da!  

One very cute laptop sleeve!  Shall I go wake up my husband to show him?  ;)