Friday, June 14, 2013

Declaring my identity as a quilter

For my birthday, Norris got me a tablet computer that I can read books on or send email from while on the road. Although I have always liked computers, I knew I was not adapting easily to the mobile devices' technology,  I had to concede they have benefits, and thought I could deal with one as long as it had a real keyboard.  We got an Asus Transformer TF700.




I yelled at it a lot the first two days, but Sister Joyce got me to play a couple of games with her (remotely - she's in the Chicago area).  This was not merely an entertaining pasttime, but served to force me to become accustomed to the Android interface.  (I have lost every game, but maybe I'll beat her in the next Scrabble-type game finally!)

What's this got to do with quilting and knitting you ask? I made a clever little carrying case for it this week using quilting fabrics.  The case has a large pocket on both sides.  This side's pocket, under the flap closure, is subdivided into three compartments.


I used a free pattern that I would not necessarily recommend.  Because I have the keyboard which makes the tablet twice as thick, I enlarged the dimensions and that made figuring out what went where a little confusing. The pattern might be great, but it was published as a PDF with a lot instructions to "sew X to Y as in figure Z" type references.  The resolution of the photos in the PDF was far too low, so an instruction that had little explanation other than "as in figure Z" was not helpful.  It didn't say whether you were doing the side seams, the bottom, or what, and the illustration just showed a blurry object.  Well, sometimes the photo was a very close up view so then the problem was, "uhm, that's a clearer photo but just where is that in the grand scheme of the case?"


But I like my little case, which has yet another pretty quilting fabric as the lining, a muslin layer below that, and has both batting and a stiffener so it will hold its shape. When this one wears out, I'll design my own with what I learned making it.

And maybe I'll buy a knitting row-counter app now.

2 comments:

Sherrye said...

Clever Cheryl.......electronics will NEVER outshine creativity!! This little tablet will probably become your best friend, since it is so portable. Good Job!!

Dorry said...

I'm intrigued by your latest project. At first glance the outside fabric reminded me of a New Zealand one I have in my collection but I see it is not that one after all. And I do like your screen saver photo! Those must be very tall coneflowers.