How to make a bowl cozy

How to make a bowl cozy

A bowl cozy helps to keep your hot food hot, and your hands from getting burned. We all enjoy a bowl of soup in winter, and with South Africa heading into winter woolies, this is a great time to get your decor up to date! In the USA you get batting pre-cut specifically for bowl cozies, but this isn’t readily available in the “gat-kant” of Africa: we’re going to use good old standard batting. A bowl cozy is a great project to use up any scraps lying around, and I’ll be doing just that. You can use polyester or cotton batting, and you can also use thermal batting if you can find it. (Thermal batting has a heat resistant element, and is great for oven mitts) Here’s what you’ll need for one bowl cozy, using 6,5″ bowl:

 

measure your bowl
  1. Two pieces of fabric measuring 11″ square – a layer cake is great if you want to make a whole lot of them.
  2. Two pieces of batting measuring 11″ square.
  3. Thread to match your fabric for stitching, and a final topstitch around the edge
  4. Ruler or tape measure (imperial, so all in inches because that’s how quilters roll)
  5. Usual sewing paraphernalia – scissors, seam ripper (because if you have one handy, you won’t need it!)
Measure your bowl to get the perfect cozy size
For a 6″ bowl: 9″ squares; put darts 1″ across and 2″ down
For a 8″ bowl: 12″ squares; put darts 1″ across and 2.5″ down
For a 12″ bowl: 15″ squares; put darts 1″ across and 3″ down
 

 

Layer one fabric square to each batting square and pin for quilting.

You don’t need to do a lot of quilting for these, so stitching from corner to corner is sufficient. Mark your lines to make it simpler to stitch straight.

Use your walking foot and stitch from corner to corner on both squares.

Fold each square in half and mark 2,5″ on the folded edge and 1″ on the raw edge. Draw a line from each mark to create your darts. Do this for both edges on both squares.

Trim a narrow seam allowance on each of the darts so that you can reduce bulk without risking the seam stitches.

With the right sides together, match up the darts and the corners and pin them together.

Stitch the two squares together leaving a 4″ gap to turn the cozy right sides out.

Trim the corners to make a neat finish when turning the cozy out.

Turn the cozy right side out through the gap that you left. Pin the edges to prepare for top-stitching around the edge and to close the gap.

Top stitch all around and your cozy is finished.

One bowl cozy is quick to make – you’ll have a full set of 24 (haha, 6) in no time!
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