Felted Laptop Cover Pattern

Hooray! I am SO proud of this project, I simply must share! Here is the lovely felted laptop cover that I made for Matt just in time for Valentine’s Day!

There are a handful of other felted laptop cover recipes out there, but I haven’t found them to be detailed enough to duplicate, so I decided to post this here. This is custom-sized for Matt’s 17″ MacBook Pro. If you happen to catch a mistake, or if you adapt this pattern to fit another laptop, please post your findings in the comments so we can all benefit! Thank you!

Yarn

• 2 skeins Noro Kureyon in #185 (multi)
• 1 skein Cascade 220 wool in #8400 (grey)

Needles

• 1 24″ US size 8 circular (Addi Turbos, natch!)

Pattern

• c/o 140 using Judy Becker’s Magic Cast-On: 70 sts on each needle using solid color.
• Knit 3 complete rounds with solid color.
• *Change color, k 2 rounds with variegated color.
• Change color, k 2 rounds with solid color.
• Repeat from * until work reaches 38 cm.
• Bind off 70 sts, aligned with the cast-on row.
• Continue in 2 row stripes until work reaches 50 cm.
• Bind off remaining 70 sts.

Now, you have a choice: it’s up to you if you want to sew down the flap pre- or post- felting. I ended up sewing it down pre-felting, then cutting it out and re-sewing post-felting, so that it would be as snug as possible on the machine.

pre-felting pictures:

Felting

Felt using your preferred method, making sure that it doesn’t get smaller than 25 cm wide. Mine went through two hot wash cycles full of jeans, with me shocking the wool by pulling it out of the machine, wringing it out, and swishing it in a big bowl of ice water every 3-5 minutes during both wash cycles.

Finishing

The construction of the cover is basically a glorified sandwich bag. The top 10 cm or so acts like the flap that you turn inside-out to open, and then turn the other way to close. The advantage of this design is huge: no sewing on fasteners of any kind, and no fear that the fasteners will interact with your laptop in a way you won’t like.