These fabulous bowl covers are incredibly easy to make, great for the environment (no more plastic wrap) and also make amazing gifts.

In this tutorial, I share how to make these fabulous stash busters with the free three circles template downloadable here:

 

 

The sizes included are:

• • 20cm (7⅞”) – fits bowls of between 15 and 25cm diameter (6-10 inches)

• • 30cm (11¾”)– fits bowls of between 25 and 35cm diameter (10-14 inches)

• • 40cm (15¾”)– fits bowls of between 35 and 45cm diameter (14-18 inches)

 

What you’ll need:

• • Woven fabric such as cotton or whatever is in your scraps bin

• • Matching thread

• • Fabric scissors

• • Elastic – I’ve used 0.5cm (¼”) wide elastic

• • Optional: Pinking shears

• • Sew Hello bowl cover pattern template

 

Cut out your fabric

To cut out your fabric, download the print at home template linked here. The template has patterns for three different sized bowl covers, 20cm (7⅞”), 30cm (11¾”) and 40cm (15¾”).

Print, stick together and let’s get cutting. I’ve chosen 3 fabrics, which I like together, to make a set of bowl covers.

 

 

Hem

There are a few different methods to make bowl covers, but I like this hemmed version as it looks neat and is durable.

The first step is to finish the raw edges of your bowl cover, think overlock, zig zag machine stitch or pinking shears. I’ve used my over-locker to finish these edges.

 

 

Once the edge is finished, set your stitch to a long straight stitch with low tension and sew 2 lines of stitching, one close to the edge, around 0.5cm (¼”) from the edge, and the other at 1.5cm (⅝”) from the edge, leaving long ends. These will help you to get a clean, smooth finish to your hem. I’ve done these in blue to show where I have sewn.

 

 

Give the ends of the stitching at 0.5cm (¼”) a little tug to let the material gather a tiny bit and distribute the gathers around the bowl cover, so that it curls inwards slightly.

 

 

At this point, I recommend heading to your iron and giving your bowl cover a press at the 1.5cm (⅝”) line. Distribute your gathers again as you iron to make a smooth fold. This makes it really easy to then hem. Hem close to the finished edge of your fabric, leaving a 5cm (2″) gap, big enough to feed your elastic through, on one side of the cover.

 

 

Add elastic

Cut your elastic to size according to the chart below:

Bowl cover size	Elastic length
20cm (8″)	40cm (16″)
30cm (12″)	60cm (23″)
40cm (16″)	80cm (31″)

Using a safety pin attached to one end of the elastic, thread the elastic through the casing that you have made by hemming. Overlap the elastic a little, and sew together. Make sure this is very secure before you stretch the bowl cover until the elastic is all in the casing.

 

 

Topstitch the opening of the casing in place. Trim all your ends and remove any basting stitches left from your 1.5cm (⅝”) line and gathering line. Your bowl cover is now done and ready to use!

 

 

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial and that you impress friends and family with this thoughtful and extremely useful gift! If you would like to see more Sew Hello patterns, please download our free pattern, the St Ives Sweatshirt

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