Microwaveable Bowl Cozy

My sis asked what I was up to and I replied "making bowl cozies". After a few minutes of silence she responded "I do not know what that is...is it a sweater for a bowl?"

It's more like a potholder that fits around a bowl in the microwave so you can lift and hold the hot bowl without burning your hands - it also works for holding a freezing cold bowl. I found a pattern on Pinterest that looked easy enough so Janis and I had craft day and made a few of them.

One thing you have to be very cautious about is making sure all of the materials are 100% cotton - even the thread, or it could melt and burn up in the microwave. The woman cutting my fabrics at Jo-Ann's recommended Pellon Wrap N Zap for the batting, it's made for going in the microwave - I would not have known to look for that, thanks for the heads up Jo-Ann lady.

These are easy once you get the hang of where to make the 4 pleats that give the cozy it's bowl shape, I messed up a couple times and put them in the wrong place! I took lots of pictures to help, and you can click on the link below to see more pictures from the site I followed to make these.

You need:

2 10" squares of 100% cotton fabric
2 10" squares of 100% cotton batting (Wrap N Zap)
cotton thread
ruler and scissors, a marking pen if you have one (I didn't so we used a regular pen - our fabrics were dark enough that you couldn't see the ink thru the fabric so it worked just fine).

Put 1 square of batting behind 1 square of fabric and sew together with a big X across the front. Repeat with the second fabric square and batting.

This is the tricky pleat part - it's easy after I made one... fold one square in half with right sides together, on the backside make a dot 1" in from the fold, another dot 2 inches down on the fold and draw a line between the dots. Sew along the line. Repeat at the bottom edge.

Now fold the square in half the other way and repeat sewing the two lines on the fold edge of the square. This is where I messed up - I made the lines on the free edge of the square instead of along the fold.

Trim the excess away so it won't be so bulky:

left one hasn't been trimmed yet - right one is trimmed.
see how the squares are bowl shaped now?

Repeat with the second square. Each square will have 4 pleats.

Put the two squares right sides together and sew all around the edges, leaving a small gap to invert the cozy.

Once sewn, turn it right sides out thru the gap - I use a skewer to get the corners turned out as sharp as possible.

 Iron. Then top stitch around the entire cozy, including the gap.

You can change the size by cutting smaller squares, in the above picture the dotted fabric is made with 8" squares and it's perfect for a small 4 inch bowl.

You can also make the cozy more or less curved (depending on the type of bowls you have) by making the pleats deeper than 1". Example:

In the above photo, the white bowl is deeper and has straighter sides so I made the cozy with deeper pleats - instead of marking 1" in from the fold I did 1.5". The green bowl is more open so the 1" pleat is perfect for that style of bowl. Another example of what I mean:

You might not think you need a sweater for your bowls, but I'm telling ya - these cozies are so handy we use them on a daily basis!

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