Soup Bowl Cosiess

Awinter broth is soothing for tired, cold and weary muscles, fighting flu, coughs and colds. That’s how I see soup. However, living in Scotland for a brief time, I discovered that a soup seems compulsory part of a diet and most people I knew had them as comfort food. I love a good homemade Stilton and Broccoli soup and I think Tomato or Minestrone are popular for most. Let’s make some bowl cosies to help keep the soup hot and your hands warm as you slurp into a good spoonful.

Make a template to start off with to ensure the cosy will fit your bowl.

A good measure will be a 10” square paper

Fold in half and then half again

Unfold, use the creases in your paper to mark out darts on each of the four sides.

From the edge of the paper, follow and mark a dot along the crease, at 2.5” toward the middle of the paper.

From the crease, along the sides of the paper, mark 1” on either side of the crease. Join the 3 marks to make a triangle.

Do this on all 4 sides of the square (I have shown one as an example in the square below)

Cut the triangles out and tape the paper together to make a paper bowl. If your soup bowl fits this cosy, then you can move onto making this in fabric.

If you find, your bowl is too wide, then use a larger square. You may need to go up to 13” for a pasta bowl shape.

If you have a deeper bowl, then, perhaps your darts need to be longer., Maybe make them 3”-4”. Not too long though.

Time to Sew

Use the template and cut out 2 pieces of 100% cotton fabric squares.

Cut 2 squares of a natural Batting (wadding) I use Soya and Cotton mix from Vlisene. It’s 1/4” thick.

Mark the triangle darts on the fabric and the batting, but do not cut them out.

Lay one fabric square with the wrong side against a piece of batting, I use 2 or 3 safety pins to hold them together, treat this as one piece of fabric. Fold the fabric in half. Batting on the outside and fabric on the inside.

Sew from the tip of one of the triangles, down along the sides to the edge of the fabric. Do this to the triangle on the opposite side of the fabric. Unfold the fabric and you’ll find you have shaped the fabric into half a bowl.

Fold the fabric in half along the other sides, and repeat, sewing these darts to form a bowl shape. Repeat for the second piece of batting and fabric squares.

Trim the darts o there is little fabric left along the seams. All the raw edges of the darts should be on the batting side.

Turn one of the bowls so the fabric sits outside and the batting is on the inside. Sit this bowl inside the other. So now the two bowls are stacked, the fabric hidden inside and the batting on the outside. Match the raw edges along the top, the tips of the corners and the seams together.

Sew along all the top edges, leaving about 3 inches unsewn.

Turn the bowls through, pulling the fabric through to the right side out and the batting on the inside.

Press

Topstitch the opening a 1/4” away from the edge of the bowl edge and follow all the way around the edge of the bowl cosy

Bon Appetite! Enjoy your soup.

Note: Do not use glues, spray of otherwise. Do not use anything like Insulbrite or any batting that contains foils. Fabrics must not have metallic finishes and remember to use a cotton thread.

Abi x