Showing posts with label sewing for tech toys. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sewing for tech toys. Show all posts

Saturday, January 16, 2016

Pillow Stand For My Kindle

I made this for two reasons.  First, I've wanted one for years.  The Pinterest links have been on one of my boards for at least two years.  Second, I thought these might make good gifts.  I finally tried one!

The stripes were supposed to be going the the other direction!  That would have looked so much nicer.
The tutorial is from FactotumofArts.com.  Of the pillow-type stand tutorials I found, this one has the best directions and finishing.  I changed it--of course.  I think most people will want this for sitting pretty much upright and it does, no doubt, work quite well for that purpose.  I want it for reading in bed, and, apparently I slouch down a lot.
Not a great angle when lying down.

 I made changes to try to accommodate the fact that I want the Kindle to be more upright, but, as it turned out,  I still really need to play with the pillow section to make it hold the device further forward.  I had already cut the fabric before realizing it would not be large enough.  I am assuming a larger pillow will have more vertical lift, right??  Changes I made to try to fix my issue at that point:
  • I shortened up the lip in the front.  My Kindle is thin enough not to need the large lip anyway.
  • I also shortened up the flat area where the device sits.  Again, the kindle doesn't need that much space anyway, and it would seem to provide even further space for the kindle to angle down too far.  In fact, I might even eliminate this extra space altogether on the next one.  The Kindle is so thin it should fit nicely between the lip and pillow. 
Had I not shortened up those two area, the pillow section would have been much smaller which would seem to equate with it being less able to hold the Kindle as upright as I wanted.

One success was the use of poly pellets for stuffing on the pillow section.  I have put off using these because of the horror stories out there about how hard they are to work with.   They turned out to be  easier to use than the poly fill suggested for the lip section.  The tutorial suggests using rice for the pillow section with the addition of poly fiberfill for the very top because you would not be able to fill the pillow completely with rice due to spilling issues.  I am not sure why one could not just fill it with rice.  I had no problem at all.  I left a one inch opening in the pillow section which worked out perfectly for the funnel.  I filled the pillow almost completely with the pellets.  The needle was threaded and ready to go making closing the pillow quick and easy.  I might have had five or six pellets on the table that needed to be picked up at the end. 

I shall certainly try this pattern again!  I'm going to enlarge the pattern by 3 inches in each direction the next time.   I will also use a different fabric.  I thought the decorator weight fabric would be a good choice, but it turned into a wrinkled mess when turning it right-side out.  With the seams going in opposite directions on the top and bottom,  pressing was crazy hard.  I hate wrinkles.  Fortunately I love ironing.

Here is is without the Kindle.  A bit plain and, as I said, the stripes are going in the wrong direction.  It makes it look a tad roly-poly.  I think I might try embroidering something on it next time or using a busier print.
I used poly pellets to stuff it.
Now I just need to leave it out to see who expresses an interest for gifting.