Wednesday 29 August 2012

Leather iPhone Case ~ Prototype...


My eldest son wanted a leather and felt case for his iPhone and asked if I'd be interested in helping him to make one. Without hesitation, I said, YES!!!

After researching sewing with leather, we purchased a Teflon foot and leather needles for my machine, leather, felt and different threads.


There were two prerequisites:-
  • The seams were to be on the outside, so the felt would show.
  • The case needed to be a tight fit.

We spent a lot of time working out how we would make the case. There is no unpicking mistakes, as this would leave holes in the leather. Trying to work out how to cut the pieces and then sew the seams exactly caused much discussion, until we realised we were looking for a hard solution, when really, it was quite simple. Not all the Maths above was needed.

Here are the steps we used to make our prototype...


  • Roughly cut the leather and felt so they are larger than the finished size.
  • With the felt uppermost and covered with a cloth, bond the felt to the leather using double sided fusible webbing. 


  • Cut a template, showing where the stitching will go.
  • Stick the template to the leather with double sided sticky tape.
  • Use bulldog clips to hold the leather in place.


  • Sew around three sides of the template. Note that we did not backstitch at the beginning or end, as it is unlikely the needle would go through the same holes.
We discussed rounded stitched corners, but decided that we couldn't be accurate enough, so went with squared. 


  • Cut to the finished size.


At this point we cut one of the end threads. Just as well this was only a prototype, as there was no way to secure the ends after cutting one of them.


  • Thread the ends back through existing holes to secure.


You can see the thread we cut sticking up. As expected, the stitching started to come undone on this side when the phone was put in. 

At this point we thought rounded corners would look better than squared. We have to find a way to cut accurately around a small curve. We'll work this out next time. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment.

Before starting, we experimented with different threads. We'd purchased nylon, polyester and rayon thread in a variety of sizes. We went with size 69, nylon thread, which is the largest size most domestic machines can handle (according to The Thread Exchange, which is where we bought ours).

We found a stitch length of 4 and increasing the tension to 6, gave the best results. Not sure why increasing the tension was better for us, as most sites say to decrease the tension.

The case was a perfect fit for the iPhone!!!

Even though the bottom seam looks uneven in the photo, in reality, it is even. It's just the corners that aren't right.

We were very pleased, both with our prototype (knowing we'll round the corners properly, next time) and with what we learnt. Next time, we're tackling not only an iPhone case, but a case to carry a laptop, iPad and iPhone. Stay tuned...

Tips for sewing with leather:-
... Pam

8 comments:

  1. A leather iPhone case...I'm thinking stocking stuffer for the gentlemen this Christmas! Looks really nice!

    btw, I was wondering why I had prototype in my mind when I wrote my most recent blog post. Now I know! It must of gotten stuck there when I was reading through your blog post earlier today.;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great job Pam, it's fun to stretch the boundaries once in a while and sew with new and interesting materials! I'm not as thorough as you though, minimal research here, I just break a needle and go, right that didn't work, maybe this will.... haha!

    ReplyDelete
  3. That looks really stylish. Great idea!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Great post Pam, I was given a Kindle for my birthday recently so might be tempted to have a go at a leather case for it now! Clover make a pocket curve template that might be just the thing you need for the corners.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Pam, what a beautiful idea! and a beautiful creation! I loved your tutorial. My husband and one of my children (I have 4) asked me an iPhone case but not in fabric, you have given me the solution, thank you. Following your steps I can not go wrong! Have a nice day. Marisa.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Another great project, Pam. Thanks for the tutorial and tips!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for stopping by! I love reading your comments and try to reply to all of them via email. If you don't receive an email reply from me, check back here.