I made a protective mobile case out of soft leather.

The leather is cut with a laser cutter and I designed the pattern in OpenSCAD to made it able to adapt to different phone sizes. A ready made dxf for my phone (Sony Xperia Z3) is available. Any other phone should work as well, but you need to change a few parameters in the .scad file and compile it to a new dxf file.

You will need:

Leather
- I used 1.2mm thick soft leather
- four layers of the leather pressed together should not be thicker than the thickness of the phone
Thread
- I used some furniture grade thread
- Fishing line should work as well
Sewing needle
Laser cutter

You may be able to skip the laser cutting and cut the piece by hand. Nice thing about laser cutting are the perfect spaced holes. But maybe it can be done by hand with some thin soft leather...

Step 1: Adapt the Pattern to Your Phone

If you have a Sony Xperia Z3 you can skip this step and just download the ready made .dxf.

If not, you need to install OpenSCAD to you computer, open the attached .scad file and change a few parameters (everything is metric/mm):

mobile_thickness
mobile_height
mobile_width
material_thickness
added_width_margin -> this is for reflecting the type of corner your phone has. I used 0.3 on my Z3 which has very round corners. Can be up to 1 for really boxy phones.
added_height_margin -> Same as above.
hole_spacing -> change this last and watch the highlighted holes on the preview window. There should be no holes piercing the edges. Should be between 3 and 5.

You rerender the file with F6. If you are happy, use the export function to create you .dxf file.

Step 2: Fire the Laser!

I hope you already know how to use your laser cutter. =)

You need to fix the leather down, it needs to be flat and without tension.

I found it good practise to cut the holes first.

Warning: Burned skin does not smell good.

Step 3: Sewing Time

Grab your needle and a good Ted talk, this can take some time.

Start at the bottom, snake your way up the holes till you hit the top, then snake down again. Do some loops in the last two holes to fix it down and push the loose end into the sleeve.

Turn and repeat.

Gratulations, you just made your very own mobile phone sleeve! =D