Tablet Pillow Prop. A tutorial, of sorts.

I'll get right into my shiny new blog with a short, poorly done, poorly photographed tute!

And story time. A bit over a year ago my family moved to our forever house, my sewing machine had no where to go. I tried to put it some places but, honestly, it just wasn't working for us and in the end it was sidelined. Today I gathered the motivation (boredom?) to clean out what we'd called "The Play Room" but was more used as the dumping ground for all the toys that Ninja and Princess no longer played with, they're in the boot of the car waiting for a Op-Shop bin and now my sewing machine sits proudly in the corner! So I was itching to sew something - but what?! I don't have my usual stash of older clothes to upcycle, as this was impromptu my material stash wasn't washed and.. gah! What to do! So I did a bit of a googling, and suddenly it dawned on me, a pillow to sit my iPad on in bed, on my knees and beside my bed. Google didn't help much, I just didn't like the ones I saw, or the ones I saw weren't tutes, so I squinted and went... "can't be too hard." And, thus, my Tablet Pillow Prop was born.

I say "Tablet Pillow Prop" because Tablet devices aren't just iPads these days, there's such a range and this can be changed to suit whatever you have.

I will warn you before you go further - I'm not one for super awesome directions, I work on the fly and that measure twice cut once thing.. yeah I get them mixed up. ;)

Before we begin, if you wish to make this, go ahead, if you wish to profit off this, at least tell me you're going to.

To start off, get some paper, scissors, (rock - teehee) your device, a pencil, some pins, stuffing and your material of choice.

Pop your tablet onto the paper and trace around it, cut around the tracing and then place the traced paper onto your material. I did a rough fold in thirds and left an extra 7" - as you can see the paper template is a lot smaller than the material, you can do it however you like for your device, make a bigger one, a smaller one, one the same size.. you can do anything! In the end for mine each third was 10" by 17" (with that extra 7" down the bottom)

Lay it out, then on one end measure that 7" extra and draw a line across. Fold in the sides, and pin. Sew one side over itself and sew to just over that line, then zip the sewing machine across the line, securing that other side folded over - that doesn't make much sense, so here's a photo of the first side.

Now to the stuffing of that part, I used a harder material than soft-fill. Soft fill may work just as well, but I thought there's less chance of slippage if I use a different, and harder material for that bit. I dug through my stash and found some awesome material of the 80s, so awesome that I took a photo of it, rolled it up and slipped it into the opening. Then sewed along that bit too.

Right choice for filling, right?

 Now that that was taken care of, I had to finish the prism net, because essentially that's all this is - a triangular prism. Knowing that the sides of my faces were 10", I measured out an equilateral triangle with 10" sides onto some paper, stacked my material and cut 2 out. Then pinned them  right sides together from the top and got to sewing my net.

It's hard to explain exactly how I did it, I'd sew one side of the triangle, then mirror that on the other side, then join the next triangle side with the next part of the rectangle and continued. In the end it all looked like it should! Leaving the bit across the front open for turning and stuffing.

Bang! Turn inside own through the opening at the front, stuff with whatever stuffing and to whatever firmness you want (I didn't make mine TOO firm, but not too soft!)

Then fold in and top-sew across that opening - as close to or over the sewing you've already done for the front-bit!

Then put your iPad, Nexus, Surface, WHATEVER on and admire. :D

I hope this makes sense for you, and that I didn't ramble too much, as I'm prone to. Post comments with links, photos and whatever if you make one! :D

First Post, an introduction before I get stuck into it!

New here. Hi.

I'm not new to blogging, in fact I'm a bit 'old hat' to it.. but since Social Media took over the world (as well as life and all that other junk) I've been right out of it. Oh I do miss the old LiveJournal days - but they're over.

So here I am. With nothing much to say, but an awful lot of it.

I'm a mum of 2 lovely little brats - I have a Ninja who is nearly 7 and a Princess who is nearly 4. Before I get into debates about social-conditioning and gender-stereotyping - I don't care, it's what they like.

I like to sew things. Today I set my sewing machine up and sewed something and thought about putting up a tutorial, so that's why I've decided on this today. As referenced in my blog name, I tend to sew first and thing later, I have a fair amount of Unpickers/Seam-rippers lying about so I can find one when needed.

I also like to run. Or I like to say I like to run, and then not actually do it ;) But there may be times I actually think about running and, in that case, I may post about it. I do get proud of my running achievements!

For those who know me, I'm going to try and handle this blog with a bit of named anonymity (because I know I won't be able to help but post photos! But I'll at least leave off names) if you'll grant me that. This blog will be used for all sorts of things, I hope.

I'll leave this here. And come back later to keep going, keep my thoughts down. I'll pretty up this blog later.

Thanks.