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| Told you it was skanky, and old! |
I traced the old cover onto the back of the fabric* and cut out the new front. The back is an envelope closure, so I made the fabric for the body of the bottle longer, and separated the shoulders and neck which would sit over the top forming the envelope.
*I would suggest you trace around your bottle or your old cover onto a piece of paper, and use that to make your pattern pieces before tracing onto the fabric. This would have saved me some trimming at later stages.
This gave me three pieces to baste and quilt.
I decided that straight diagonal lines in hot pink would add to the happiness of the fabric, and not distract. I marked these with my hera marker, about an inch apart, but I just used the width of my trusty metal ruler to space them.
Once quilted, I trimmed the batting and backing back to the top fabric, using my small rotary cutter. I love this guy, he's so useful for getting nice smooth curves.
Then it was time for binding. First up, the edges that will become the opening of the envelope closure at the back!
I used some store bought bias-cut binding that I've had languishing in various drawers for the last two years. The way I cut the back I had to allow for the beginning of the shoulder curves on the bottom piece. This made attaching the binding a little tricky, but as it was cut on the bias and with plenty of pins, it worked fine.
Now, I laid the front piece and the two back pieces over each other with wrong sides together. Fixing them until the lined up perfectly and then I put a couple of pins in the centre to keep them in place. I decided to stitch around the edge first, before adding the binding, which made binding so much easier!
Lots of pins allowed the bias binding to nicely wind its way around all the curves. I attached the binding to itself with a straight line, following this tutorial by Wasn't Quilt in a Day. It works beautifully, though ironing the crease in and the opening the seam was a little tricky, and an almost burned finger. If you've a small iron, this is the time to break it out!
I ironed the binding away from the side it's just been attached to. This made it much easier to fold it over to the front, where I top-stitched it down on the machine. I was surprised that my machine didn't complain more at this point, as in places it was sewing through three quilted layers, plus at least two layers of binding. I was very impressed with my little machine.
And, not much time later I had a new happy (slightly sugar high) hot water bottle! That's it with the bottle inside.
Confession time - I was kind of grumpy when I was doing this, and not inclined to take much time, so I quilted the pieces without using any pins or basting spray - hence the little wrinkles you can see. So don't do as I do - baste as you usually would!!
Finally, here's the envelope back in action!
I've found this opening really makes refilling the bottle easy.
I love seeing this guy peeping out under my locker now, he definitely was the quick cheery finish I've been needing :) If any of you ever do take any of this to help with making you a new cheery hot bottle cover I'd love to see it!
Aoife xx
Very cute! And when you need a hot water bottle, sometimes the idea of candy is also very necessary. :-)
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