The new school year has started, and my first project in Project MAKE, the leather iPod case, is finished! It's been an ongoing process since Sophomore year, but it's so nice to finally have it done! In the end, I went with a different pebbled leather - so it's different than the original leather that I was going to go with (the leather pictured in the last update and what was used for the leather iPad case), which was a variant of suede.
Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the final product! It has a half-inch piece of elastic securing the top cover to its main body, and laser-cut holes going around a majority of the case to make the usually-tedious process of sewing leather much easier. I'm still debating on whether or not to search for a small piece of flexible, clear vinyl to put in the top cover part of the case to keep the screen nice and scratch-less, but so far I haven't found anything like this yet. As for how to keep the top part of the cover secure, I debated between the elastic that is has now, and sewable snaps. The snaps are far more difficult to sew on, as I would have had to laser-cut holes to sew them on, but if I ever make this style of case again (probably to fit another generation of iPod) I would definitely try to use the snaps instead, just to have something to compare this case to.
All in all, I think that the case turned out pretty neat and I'm proud that the design worked - especially considering that this was a 'first-year in MAKE' project! After two whole years, it's (somewhat) done!
The pattern is for an iPod Classic. The power/speed settings should be 80/60 for the laser cutter, although this may vary depending on your laser cutter! Be sure to do a test cut on a scrap piece of leather before cutting the case! Here's the pattern!
~front view~
~view of the back~
~view of the top cover~
~view of the charging port~