Trevyn’s parents completely spoiled us by getting us new cellphones. We didn’t get holsters with them, because we wanted to make our own. I had some bison leather from Pykeview Meadows, a bison farm on Wolfe Island who are regularly at the farmer’s market during the summer. I bought it to fix my slippers, but I had some left over when I was done. Here’s how to make a holder like mine.

What you’ll need

Leather or thick fabric
Scissors
Hammer and nail (or awl - something to poke holes in the leather)
A crappy cutting board or a wood scrap. You’ll use this to put the leather on while you make the holes in it. Don’t use a cutting board that you want to use for food again because the holes will make it difficult to clean properly.
Dental floss or some kind of thick thread to sew the leather.
Velcro or some other fastener to keep it closed.
Regular thread to attach the velcro.
Something to mark the leather. I used a black marker, which does not come off, so I reccommend you try to find something else that’ll come off more easily.
Optional: a patch to sew on opposite the velcro.

The Pattern

I decided to make a simple two piece design with one long base piece that made the bottom, back, and flap, and one smaller front piece to cover the front and sides. You can see what I mean in the completed image. To begin with I made the base pattern. Don’t forget that it’s much easier to trim off excess than to add extra leather on again!

I made sure to leave enough width so that the phone could slip easily in and out of the holder. The base needed to be long enough to fold up to form the bottom:

and long enough to fold over the top of the phone to mesh with the other piece of velcro. This second part meant I needed to decide now how much of the phone is be covered when the holder is open. Here you can see what I decided:

Once I’d decided on the base shape, I made the smaller front piece. I made sure that the width was a bit more than absolutely necessary. I wanted it to be loose so that I could easily remove the phone. With the phone in place, I guessed where the bottom would be folded up. This guess along with how much of the phone I wanted covered let me determine the length of the front piece.

Making holes in the leather

Once the shapes were determined, I made holes in the leather where they would be sewn together. I tried to make the holes evenly spaced about 2mm apart. The more evenly spaced they are, the easier they are to sew together. It might be better to make the holes through both pieces at once. Here’s what the pieces looked like after I’d made the holes in them:

Sewing it all together

Before sewing the pieces together, I attached the velcro to the front piece. I placed the velcro in the very centre of the piece, marked it, and made two rows of holes in the leather:

Then I sewed it on using the dark blue thread.

Next, I sewed the front piece to the sides of the base:

After checking the size of all the pieces, I found the centre of the bottom of the front and base pieces. I marked them and lined them up. Starting from this point, I sewed one side, then the other:

While doing this, I trimmed the corners a little bit just to round them and let the pieces fit together a bit better.

Then, I put the phone in the holster and figured out where the second piece of velcro should be placed. I made holes in the leather for the velcro:

Then I placed the patch on and added a couple of extra holes to hold the edges on properly. This was more important than for the velcro since the odd shape of the patch would allow it to be pulled up more easily than the square patch of velcro. I sewed the sides of the patch on first, then I sewed the velcro and the top and bottom of the patch on at the same time:

Trim any uneven edges, and you’re done!

You can see in the picture above that I couldn’t remove the black lines. Water just smudged my “washable” marker. I don’t think it’s a huge problem, but in a future project, I’ll probably use something else. Once I put my name and e-mail address inside, it didn’t look quite as bad.

Posted in Skills of an artist |

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