Iron Craft Challenge #4: Cozy or Crazy?

When I first saw the Iron Craft Challenge for this week – Get Cozy – I was excited. What a great opportunity to use up some of those scraps I had lying around! Also, this is a nice sized project to learn how to work with batting; if you’re not a quilter, it is somewhat intimidating.

I started by locating a tutorial, I chose this Coffee Cozy Tutorial from Erin Harris. Then, I cut out 20 cozies worth of fabric and went to town. I had my mom over to help me and needless to say, we hated this project. It was so not fun! I found the directions really hard to follow; I think there are some errors in the way to position the fabric, etc. I quit shy of putting on the buttons and now 20 button-less cozies lie on my craft table waiting to be finished. Serves me right for trying to mass produce something I’d never worked on. (If you were expecting a surprise gift from me sometime soon… it probably won’t be a coffee cozy, and if it is, it will be without a button.)

The crafter in me will not admit defeat though. Since I couldn’t face the 20 disaster cozies and maintain my enthusiasm, I started fresh. Thinking that perhaps my whole problem was that I made coffee cozies for the coffee I don’t consume… my next attempt was for my reusable drinking cup.

I worked from the Kwik Sew Cup & Can Cozy tutorial. After making 20 cozies earlier in the week, I didn’t need to follow their directions. So, I can’t vouch for how well thought out their tutorial is. I will say their pattern was nice.

I had some really pretty aqua fabric paint from my weekend freezer paper extravaganza and knew I wanted to stencil something on with it. I used white cotton fabric scraps for the front of the cozy, a coordinating aqua cotton fabric for the lining, and sandwiched some 100% organic batting in between. I also used (shh, don’t tell Kwik Sew) some Iron-on Velcro, way easier than the button method.

When I was done sewing the cozy together, I applied my freezer paper stencil. For the text, I used my Plantin Schoolbook cartridge. The bird design comes from the Give A Hoot cartridge. Clearly, I used my Cricut.

More pictures can be found in the Iron Craft Flickr group.

I’m really happy that I decided to give the cozy another chance. I hate the way my hands get cold in the winter holding my cup and it always sweats at my desk all over my work papers when the ice melts. Now, I have a stylish little cozy that solves both of those problems!

(Last post where I reference freezer paper stenciling for awhile. It’s become an addiction, and I need to stop. Or at least stop sharing, while I secretly hoard projects for myself with sweet designs and funny phrases.)