Make your own cute laptop or tablet bag

With our ageing laptop starting to do the 'overheating thing' and all the seasonal sales, the time was right to trade up to a mobile device. Remember the days when the old laptops seemed so small? Anyway, a smaller, lighter laptop calls for a smaller, lighter bag to carry it around in. Inspired by the reading bags I have made for our daughter and her buddies, I made this variation.

I included a separate flap compartment for the cords and charger: nothing worse them misplacing those. The fabric is from Bolt of Cloth. Love that place. The floral bias binding is from Fabric Vision. This basic guide can be adjusted to fit whatever device you happen to have - any thing from ipad, to laptop, to tablet. 

Use the device as a size guide and make sure to allow at least 4cm extra fabric, plus enough for the flap, around the device. 

For the Surface 3 cover, I allowed 26cm for the short edges and 49cm for the long edges. Cut two matching pieces of the main fabric to this size. 

Cut one of the main pieces into two to form the separate devise and cord pocket flap panels. 

The devise pocket panel measures 26 x 34cm, the cord pocket panel measures 26 x 15cm. 

Use the main pieces as a pattern template to cut out the lining panels. Match them up to their main panels as shown. 

Machine stitch around each panel using a half cm seam to secure the main fabric to the lining. 

Sew the Bias binding onto each of the pocket openings.

Start by pinning the short edge of the bias binding onto the edge of the fabric.  

Sew down the fold, being careful not to stretch the binding.

Once the short edge is sewn, fold the binding over the seam and secure it so the long edge overlaps the first line of stitching. 

That way the 'stitch-in-the-ditch' will catch the wider underside of the bias binding. 
The stitching should be right up against the previously stitched binding, as shown in the picture.  

The right side of the finished binding. 

At this stage it is a good idea to sew on the two sets of velcro strips. 

For the flap pocket, I cut the width of the hook tap in half, as I didn't want to have too much of it around to catch on everything that was being put into the pocket.

Position it inside the pocket panel and top-stitch into place.



The stitching will be visible on the outside of the pocket - as shown in the picture on the right

Pin the flap cord pocket onto the main panel of the bag in order to determine the placement of the opposing fluffy half of the velcro. I left this half in one piece in order to allow plenty of space to fix the velcro together.

Top-stitch it into place as shown. The stitching from this will also be visible on the outside of the bag. It forms part of the fold of the flap.










Place another length of hook velcro onto the outside of the other end of the flap pocket and top stitch it into place. This is the velcro that will secure the pocket bag flap onto the main bag.

Pin both pockets to the main outside panel of the bag and put all the cords and the device into the pockets. 

Fold the flap over to determine where the fluffy velcro should be placed in order to comfortably close the bag.

Pin the velcro strip in place and top-stitch to secure.

Place all the panels together. Overlap the bias binding at the pocket mouths so the flap pocket bias is underneath the main device pocket opening.

Attach the two short ends of the bag together using the bias binding. If you have stripy pattern fabric, now is the time to make sure they match together.

Now use the bias binding to sew up the long edges of the bag.  Leave extra binding at the ends in order to fold them in before the second row of sewing. 

Here is the underside of the tucked in end of the bias ready for the stitch-in-a- ditch to secure it.












The finished underside of the bias binding.

Give the bag a good iron, and away you go. Here is the finished, closed bag complete with its contents. Happy sewing!