A few weeks ago, a friend of mine was going through her closet and getting rid of all the clothes she doesn’t wear anymore. That’s when I spotted this gem of a t-shirt (bonus points for catching the pun). It’s an old Victoria’s Secret PINK t-shirt my friend bought many moons ago but no longer wears. The beautifully bedazzled shirt caught my eye (obviously) and then it hit me that I could make something out of or with this shirt.

This same friend had recently been gifted an iPad for her birthday, so I thought, why not make an iPad case for her? So that’s exactly what I did!

I cut out the jeweled part of the shirt and sewed it onto a piece of canvas-like fabric (it’s probably canvas). Then, I sewed on some black tulle to create some more texture on the design. Then of course, I added in the lining (which is a quilt material) and a zipper to make it a fully functioning case.

This case is large enough to easily fit an iPad but can also hold the charger without struggling to close. It could even hold a thin notebook and a pen, or, perhaps a book.

DIY Upcycled iPad Case

Materials:

• Jeweled T-shirt
• Black tulle
• 2 11″x11″ pieces of canvas
• 2 11″x11″ pieces of quilt material
• 12″-14″ all-purpose polyester zipper
• White thread
• Black thread

Directions:

First, cut the canvas and quilt material to the correct size.

Cut out the jeweled design from the t-shirt, which will now be referred to as the heart. Do your best to make sure the edges are as smooth and rounded as possible, and that both sides are even.

Pin the heart to the front of one of the canvas pieces. Because knit is stretchy and canvas is not, try to stretch the heart as far as it can go to make sewing easier. Sew all along the edge of the heart with black thread. I used a zig zag stitch for this.

Next, it’s time to pin the black tulle along the border of the heart. What I did is I twisted the tulle like a rope and then pinned it to get a nice trim. Don’t make it too loose, but don’t make it too tight. Use a straight stitch to sew the tulle to the border of the heart.

Now it’s zipper time. This part gets a little tricky to explain, so if you have trouble, please refer to this awesome youtube video that shows you how to do this part.

With the right side facing down (the canvas piece with the heart on it) and the wrong side up, fold down a 1/4″ seam from the top and press to form a line. Place the bottom side of the wrong side of the zipper down on that seam. Then take a piece of the quilt material with the right side up, and fold back a 1/4″ seam. Line that up on the zipper, sandwiching the zipper between both the canvas and quilt material. Pin and sew using the zipper foot.

Repeat with the other side.

After this, you should have canvas layers on the bottom, and quilt layers on the top. Flip the pouch so the canvas pieces are laying flat against each other and the quilt layers are laying flat against each other. Open the zipper of the bag halfway.

Leaving no more than a 1/4″ of a seam, sew the border of the canvas side shut and sew over the zipper. Then, sew the quilted side the same way, but leave the middle third of the bottom (about 3 inches) of the seam OPEN. DON’T SEW IT SHUT!

Cut a diagonal on each corner of the pouch to make it easy to flip inside out. Now, pull the inside of the canvas portion through the zipper and through the hole you left and flip the bag inside out.

Now, sew the rest of the quilted part shut. Then stuff the quilted layer into the canvas layer. And you’re done!

That’s it! It’s a pretty basic sewing project so for those of you who aren’t used to sewing all the time (I’m definitely not used to it either), it’s not a big project to tackle!

Now my friend gets to keep the best part of her old shirt and she also has a one-of-a-kind iPad case!