Laptop Craftiness

Since I will be traveling to my parents house here soon, I needed a bag to carry my laptop with. I have been looking online for months and nothing really caught my eye. I saw a few interesting bags but they were entirely too pricey. So while searching Pinterest late one night I came across this laptop bag tutorial and I was sold!

So I started out making the laptop bag....which turned in to adding a laptop sleeve...and eventually an accessory bag!

Keep reading to find out how I made all of this!

I ordered the fabric online from Lilly Bella Fabrics on Etsy in 3 coordinating prints. The only other items I needed to buy from the store was the fusible fleece lining, the swivel clasps, and the rectangle rings.

I followed Mother Huddle's Laptop Bag tutorial to make the laptop bag. This was one of the best tutorials I have used and I didn't have any problems recreating it! I bought 1/2 yard each of 3 fabrics, 1 yard of fusible fleece, swivel clasps, rectangle rings, and matching thread. It cost around $30 for all the supplies!

Okay, that is a little bit of a lie. I followed the tutorial exactly and after completing the bag I realized that my laptop is not a standard 15", it is actually 15.5". Which means my laptop didn't fit in the bag horizontally as intended! That was totally my fault for not double checking the specs for my laptop.

Total blonde moment. Oops.

I had quite a bit of material left, so I decided to figure out how to make a laptop sleeve so I could still fit it in the super cute bag I just made! I searched online for a few hours and while I liked some of each of the tutorials, there wasn't one that I 100% liked. Then I realized I could just adjust the bag tutorial to make a laptop sleeve! I ran out of fusible fleece but I noticed a few of the laptop sleeve tutorials used minky fleece instead, which I happened to have a yard of leftover from a baby blanket. 

So I wrapped the laptop in the fleece and cut out one long piece to use as lining, just like in the laptop bag tutorial. Then I just pieced together 3 pieces of fabric (like I did for the laptop bag) and made that the same size as the minky fleece lining. After piecing the sleeve in a similar manner as the laptop bag, I cut out a strap from another fabric piece and the minky. I sewed those together and sewed it to my sleeve. I sewed on the velcro and covered the velcro stitching on the strap with a big button.

Voila! A laptop sleeve! I am not going to lie, I was pretty impressed that I was able to put together this sleeve by combining elements from all the tutorials I liked.

Then you can guess what I did next, I made an accessory cinch sack!

Once again I combined a few tutorials I liked, here is a pretty good one. I decided not to use a lining for the cinch sack because I didn't see a purpose. I pieced together the fabrics just like in the laptop bag tutorial then used that piece to make the cinch sack. I am not too sure how well the openings for the ribbon will hold up, I coated them in Fray Check. Next time I think I will make button holes to slide the ribbon through.

Now I want to carry my laptop EVERYWHERE! I am so proud of myself that I was able to make exactly what I wanted, it was exactly what I needed, and it was so inexpensive to make! I managed to do the whole project in a few hours and it would've taken less time if I didn't have to scour the internet for tutorials for the sleeve and cinch sack.

I will definitely be using the laptop bag for other purposes since it is so dang cute!