Making a book to contain my computer which is full of books

Ben made this amazing cover out of a book for his Kindle and I asked him to do a guest post to share how he made it. 

My wonderful wife got me a Kindle for Christmas a year and a bit ago, and I love it. I use it every day and it is full of books. I wanted to make a case for it and saw some cool projects online, so I took a bit from here and a bit from there, added some ideas of my own, and ended up with this.

First, materials. I found a book for $1 on the outside racks at the Strand. I loved it. An old ex-library, hardcover YA sci-fi adventure from the 1950s with a beautiful cover, and just the right size. (I have since researched the book and discovered it was written under a pseudonym by Isaac Asimov, an unexpected bonus bit of cool context.) For the inside I looked around a bit and eventually found some great fabric at Purl. It has trees and turtles and hedgehogs and squirrels. I like these things.

Next, I eviscerated the book. That was hard to make myself do, and took a lot of psyching up, but once I began it took all of 15 seconds.

I then cut some cardboard to fit just inside the front and back covers as well as the spine. I cut the fabric to cover the cardboard in two pieces, one containing the front cover and spine, the other for the back cover. For the front cover, I wanted to include a pocket to hold a small notebook, so I cut a square of fabric and sewed that to the fabric for the front piece. I then sewed the front and back pieces of fabric to their respective pieces of cardboard.

I used hot glue to attach the front piece to the inside of the book. I cut four segments of elastic fabric to use to hold the book in place, and glued them around the corners of the back piece of fabric-covered cardboard. Finally I glued this piece onto the back cover of the book, overlapping the fabric from the front.

I was very happy with the finished product, except that the elastic was not quite tight enough to hold the kindle firmly in place. This turned out fine, however, as I need a place for a pen. I found a pen at Muji that fit perfectly in this space and provided the necessary snugness to keep the kindle from escaping without my consent. The end!