As a poor college student, you want to save money whenever possible but still possess the items you need as a student. This is why I decided to re-purpose an old sweater into a cute laptop case.
Materials Needed:
- a hot-glue gun and sticks of glue
- thread and a needle
- scissors
- an old sweater of your choice
- a button of your choice
- a string or piece of thin elastic
The Tutorial
Step 1:
After you’ve chosen a sweater and gathered the needed materials, you should lay out the sweater on a flat surface and line up the laptop on top to determine if it is properly sized. Mine fit horizontally, but if yours doesn’t, then you can just make it a case that the device slides into vertically.
Step 2:
Turn the sweater inside out and cut across the top of the sweater with the laptop guiding where to cut. Leaving about half an inch of space for sewing room, cut straight through the sweater with a pair of crafting scissors and remove the top piece of the sweater that we will not be using.
Step 3:
While the sweater is still inside out, sew in a line along the side that you cut in as straight of a line as you can (mine wasn’t perfect but we will hot glue so don’t worry). I recommend using a sewing machine, but it will still work if you do not have one.
Step 4:
Next, glue the ends of the fraying fabric together in front of the sewed line from between the two pieces to keep the material from fraying and to hold the sewed ends together. This will prevent the sewing from breaking apart and keep the material from fraying, since I did use a knit sweater.
Step 5:
Flip the now bag shaped piece right side out and put the laptop inside. Fold over the top that will be the flap you open, and make sure it sits comfortably in the sleeve. Next, get your string/elastic and sew it in the middle of the top flap.
Step 6:
With the string on now, locate a spot for the button on the main piece of the case that is not too tight or too loose. You want to make sure it will stay on but you also want to easily open and close it without causing too much strain, which can eventually tear the button off.
Step 7:
Now, sew the button on and then tie it with several knots. Just to be safe, I hot glued the inside of the sewed button and then under the face of the button to seal it to the fabric so the thread doesn’t receive too much stress. I did the same for the string/elastic we sewed on earlier.
Step 8:
Make sure it fits and you’re finished. You can use the sleeves to make a pocket on the front or a cute design. I opted out just because I wanted it to be sleek and fit in my bag easily.
Leave a Reply