DIY Harry Potter Kindle Covers!

Anybody else a HUGE Harry Potter fan? I totally am, so I geeked out a bit last weekend and made these Harry Potter and Ron Weasley Kindle covers for a friend of mine! How cute are they?!

Ally, the lucky recipient of these fun bits of geekery, posted a picture to my Facebook wall back in December of a Kindle cover that looked like Harry Potter’s face, and I was totally inspired! But Ally has two Kindles (lucky lady!), so I decided to make a Ron Weasley Kindle cover as well!

And if you want to make one for yourself, all you need is glue, felt, and the ability to sew two (reasonably) straight lines with a sewing machine!

DIY Harry Potter Kindle Cover

Here’s what you need:

• felt in various colors for the embellishments
• felt in any color for the lining of the case
• felt (or any fabric) in a neutral skin tone for the exterior of the case (I used duck canvas because I couldn’t find skin-colored felt)
• tacky glue
• scissors
• small paintbrush (optional)

Basically you are going to take a long strip of fabric, fold it in half, sew up both sides, and make a little “pouch” for your Kindle (or NOOK, or iPad, or whatever!).

Start by measuring the skin-toned fabric for the exterior of the case. Measure your Kindle and cut your fabric to the width of your Kindle plus one inch, and twice as tall as your Kindle, plus two inches.

The fabric in the picture above is already folded in half at the bottom of the Kindle.

Cut a piece of felt to the same size as your fabric. If you’re using 8.5″ x 11″ sheets of felt, it’s fine to make the strip of felt out of two pieces instead of one long strip of felt. If you found skin-colored felt for the exterior of your case, you can skip the additional piece of felt as a lining, unless you want your case to be a little thicker and more cushion-y.

Now it’s time to decorate! First, choose your design. I decided to do Harry and Ron so they would be a matched set. The hair, glasses, scar, and scarf on the one cover make it obviously Harry Potter, so I decided I needed something in the same style that signified Ron Weasley. Freckles were perfect! (Big ears would have worked great too, but I didn’t want anything hanging outside of the edges of the cover.)

I sketched out my designs on a piece of paper, and once I was happy with the general shape, I cut them out of appropriately colored felt.

For the scarves, I cut one giant piece of maroon felt, and then a few strips of yellow to go on top to make stripes. You could also alternate pieces of maroon and yellow, but it was easier this way and made it a bit 3D, which I like.

The next step is to glue your felt pieces to the cover fabric. I tested a bunch of glues and decided that tacky glue worked best for sticking the felt to the duck canvas. Felt can be hard to glue; glue can seep through the felt and be visible from the front. But I used a paintbrush to spread the tacky glue out in a thin layer, it didn’t seep through at all!

Lay out your felt pieces on the upper half of your cover fabric. You will be folding the fabric in half and sewing it into a pouch later, so make sure your felt is only on the top half!

After your felt pieces are glued down, glue the strip of lining felt to the other side of your skin-colored fabric. Let the glue dry for a few hours to make sure it holds really well.

Once the glue is dry on the lining and the embellishments, you need to hem the top and bottom raw edges. Fold about a 1/4″ of fabric over towards the inside at the top short edge, and sew or glue it to hem. Then repeat for the bottom short edge. Don’t hem the raw edges on the long sides, you’ll deal with those next. Once the short raw edges are hemmed, fold the fabric in half, inside out, so that all the embellishments are on the inside and the lining is on the outside. Sew a line up both edges, leaving about 1/8″ to 1/4″ seam allowance.

Turn the case right side out, and you’re done!

The Harry Potter Kindle cover was designed to cover a standard sized Kindle Keyboard.

The Ron Weasley Kindle cover was designed to fit a Kindle Fire, which is a bit thicker than a standard Kindle. Just make sure to measure your device(s) before cutting the fabric, and it will fit perfectly!

Have you guys made cases for any of your tech/devices? Remember the iPad cover and stand I made out of an old binder last year? That thing is still holding up great and I use it every day!

I link up at these awesome parties!