my pen wrap

While an old 12″ Powerbook is long gone, its luxurious microfiber cover/sleeve remains in my possession. Confident I’ll not have another laptop with the same footprint, the sleeve became the foundation for a new pen wrap.

I looked at a lot of pen wraps before deciding to make one. There’s lots of nice ones that can be purchased. In fact, my current black denim pen wrap was great, except that I wanted a version that would allow even my tallest Edisons to fit completely inside the pen slot without the tops showing. In other and more words: with the top flap open, the pens would still be hidden inside their compartments. These are among the strange thoughts that can overtake a pen person.

The process for repurposing the laptop sleeve was simple. That is, once I decided to take a chance on finally using a sewing machine for the first time in 20 years. We’ve a puppy in the house, and so with great regularity of late, we’ve been sewing chew toys made from old sweatshirts and things.

There are plenty of other folks who make beautiful, elegant pen wraps. All I wanted to accomplish with my DIY project was to come up with a serviceable, hardy wrap for my personal use. I’m not a pattern maker, and pretty much copied my denim wrap. Only mine is ever so purposefully taller and wider. Guestimating measurements is risky business, yet my wrap came out okay.

Once the stitching was removed, the sleeve was merely a large, thick, super-soft, rectangular piece of microfiber.The sleeve was purchased many years ago at a MacWorld show from Radtech.

Originally I had planned on the outside of the pen wrap being a thick canvas style material. Paired with the thick microfiber cloth that combination proved to be too thick, and hard to roll up. For the outside cloth I went with a thinner, cotton black and grey patterned fabric remanent that complimented the grey microfiber. The two fabrics combined feel quite thick and sturdy for carrying pens.

Sewing the two pieces of cloth together, the measurements were 17″ x 9 1/4″. I  used 12.5″ of the length for the pen slot area, leaving a good 4.5″ for the closing flap. Approximately! I measured the pens slots themselves every 1.5″. (One of the slots is slightly wider than all the others.) On one side of the wrap, I sewed in a 12″ long piece of black cloth. Velcro (yes) was sewn into this closing piece of material. Once the black piece is wrapped around the pen wrap, the velcro keeps it shut.

This month I’m sharing this DIY tale with you because, while many of my pen friends are crafty softs of people, I am not. You can see that my wrap is somewhat rough and choppy in its finished form. Hey, I like it! I made it!

If I can do it, you can to! If you desire to…and if you don’t, there’s choices in the buy-it-yourself world, too.

I feel pretty good about carrying my Hakumin Mina in this soft pen wrap. If needed, I can carry all my pens with me using the new wrap, and the older denim wrap. Pen wraps make the collection seem…smaller. Yes. Hmmmm…. Maybe even one may do someday.

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Just a Few FPN Pen Wrap Reviews:

• Pen Wraps from Exbpens
• Custom Pen Wrap by Pacific Coast Pens
• Levenger Bomber Jacket
• Aston 5-Pen Wrap

Update 2013/02/20:  An FPN post on another DIY wrap.