Bowl Cozies

At the Pleasanton Craft Fair I attended on Friday 9/25, I bought two kits to make bowl cozies. My friend raved about how great a cozy was for taking hot things out of the microwave. I made up one cozy and it took less than 30 minutes. Here are the steps to its assembly.

The kits comes with two 10" squares of cotton fabric and two 10" squares of a thin batting. The corners are rounded and notches or snipped out of each straight side. First stitch an X to keep the cotton and batting from sliding relative to each other. Then stitch darts out of the four notches in each half with ¼" seam allowance ". These darts shape the flat fabric into two bowl shapes.

Mate the two bowls, right sides together, stitch ⅜"around the perimeter leaving an opening, and then turn right sides out. Looking back I wished I'd left a bigger opening than the 2½" suggested. It would have made turning much easier with the bulk of the double batting. Last step is to top stitch all around the outer edge about ¼" in. The following photos show the bowl before turning and then both the inside and outside of the bowl after turning and top stitching.

They fit really nice, also. I do not know if there is a standard for bowls and I just happen to meet it with my bowls but the cozy fits super great.

Here is a summary of the pre-assembly dimensions for making another cozy without having another kit. Two squares for cotton and two squares for batting are 10" x 10" each. The notch for the dart is about 1½" wide and 1⅝" deep. The corners are rounded to a 1" radius, which is 2" diameter circle.

I made up the second kit and here is that cozy. The outside has the chickens and the inside has the swirls, but I suppose it can be used in reverse if preferred. This time I was wiser and left a larger opening to make turning right sides out easier. This project will be great for gifts and for nibbling away at my partial layer cakes.