Two years ago, I bought a Kindle Touch. At the time, I couldn’t find a case that was cheap, light and durable, so I decided to make my own. I settled on leather as the main material, due to its durability and workability. The design is simple and consists of three parts

• a 35cm x 12cm ‘cover’ that wraps around the height of the Kindle. This part also includes the brace holding the bottom of the Kindle in place.
• two 17cm x 12cm pieces to provide extra protection for the front and back (I ended up only making one of these for the back).
• a 19cm x 2cm strap to hold the top of the Kindle in the case.

I made a parchment paper and staples prototype and headed to a small leather workshop in the town where I lived. The owner was extremely helpful and kindly took the time to explain various aspects of leather work to a complete novice. I took my baking paper model to buy the required leather and she pointed out some problems to do with the assembly and even gave me some leather samples for free to build a first mock-up. A couple of lessons learned from the prototype:

• punch the holes through the front of the case in hopes of making them align better.
• use a thicker thread to obscure any ill positioned holes.
• make the fit too tight rather than too loose as leather has some give in it.

I drew the shape of the individual pieces onto the back of the leather with a ballpoint pen and used a utility knife to cut them out. Proper scissors would have made this much easier but the utility knife combined with a ruler to keep the cut straight worked fine for me. By far the most challenging and time consuming part of making the case was punching the ~150 holes through up to 3 layers of leather. I used a hammer and a pointy tool (similar to this one). It was tough to make the holes the same size but with a bit of practice the results were decent. Leather is mildly forgiving of measurement inaccuracies which was extremely helpful when sewing the pieces together.

The added thickness of the case actually makes reading with the Kindle much easier as it is far more comfortable to hold. The case weighs ~60 grams, so it adds 20% to the overall weight. I originally wanted to add a magnet to hold the front cover in place, and another layer of leather to reinforce the front cover, but never got around to it. Here’s what it looks like today:

Total cost: 10EUR Total time spent: ~10hrs (planning, trips to the shop, 2 prototypes and the final product).

While there are cheaper (and less time consuming!) options available on Amazon, it was fun to plan and make my own! It turned out to be very sturdy too: it has survived a good two years so far with little sign of wear, while my friend’s case (who bought his at the same time as I made my own) is falling apart.