Laptop Cozy Tutorial

MATERIALS:

• Enough fabric to wrap up your laptop (as if it were a gift) twice
• Enough quilt batting to wrap up your laptop once
• Scissors
• Thread
• Sewing Machine

STEPS:

1) Cut out two strips of fabric large enough to cover your laptop with extra for your seam allowance and extra at the top (to create a fold). Here is my fabric, with the laptop inside.

2) repeat with a single layer of quilt batting. Here is what your three pieces should look like:

3) Stitch the quilt batting to the wrong side of one of your sheets of fabric. Here’s what mine looked like:

4) Here is what your two pieces of fabric should look like now:

5) Stitch the sides of both pieces of fabric shut, right sides together, to form an envelope – with the same amount of extra fabric left over on the top of each envelope. Here is what mine looked like:

6) Turn one envelope right side out. I chose to turn the envelope with the batting attached right side out.

7) Place the envelope you turned right side out inside of the other one, so that the right sides of the two envelopes are facing each other, like this:

8) Stitch the raw edges together, leaving an opening along the top of the envelope flap for turning right side out.

9) Turn right side out and hand-stitch the envelope flap shut the rest of the way. Or, skip this step by top-stitching the edge of the envelope using your sewing machine. I sewed mine shut by hand:

Insert your laptop, and fold the flap into the opposite edge to create a neat little package:

Ta-da! A gift that works for guys as well as girls (although I doubt many guys would appreciate this particular fabric). You can turn it so the “quilted” side is facing in; I couldn’t make up my mind which way looked better. You can also make the quilting look much nicer. This was my first attempt at machine quilting anything, so I just stuck with random straight lines, which I’m not actually sure that proper quilters would even define as quilting, but I didn’t know what else to call it…

Questions? Let me know in the comments. Don’t be intimidated by all the steps; I made this this morning in well under an hour, with three “helpers” and in spite of stitching it together the wrong way the first time. If you don’t have a laptop, my children think this makes an excellent dress-up hat.

MaryAnne Kochenderfer

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MaryAnne is a craft loving educator, musician, photographer, and writer who lives in Silicon Valley with her husband Mike and their four children.