needle book: valentine's

For some reason my camera doesn't photograph red well. It turns into flourescent bright red which I toned down in Photoshop. This is a cherry red sweater.

My idea for a Valentine's craft project is a cosy for your hot water bottle. This project is very easy and you can do it in a couple of hours and have it ready for a gift in no time if you like. Mine was going to be a Valentine's present, but it turned out a bit girly... anyway here's how you make it.

Step 1
Felt a sweater. Mine was a lovely soft cashmere sweater from a thrift shop, but it had frayed a lot at the edges and had developed huge holes in the elbows that made it less than cosy. Felting is fun because you can do the opposite of whatever you usually do to look after your woolens. Throw it in the washing machine. Use lots of soap and hot water. Agitate it as much as you can. Shock it by throwing it into cold water, than back into hot. Run it in the dryer until it's piping hot. Once it's shrunk and thick and felted you're ready to go.

Step 2
Trim your sweater at the seams so you have two nice big panels to work with. This way if you have a medium sweater you can probably make two cosies.

Step 3
Fold the panel in half and cut around the bottom and other side using your hot water bottle as a guide with a little extra seam allowance. I curved the corners at the bottom.

At the top you can curve around the shoulders and make a collar around the neck. This keeps the bottle snugly inside the cosy. To get the bottle in, just roll it lengthwise while it's empty and put it in, then fill the bottle while it's already in its cosy. Sounds simple, but it took me a long time to figure this out!

Step 4
Sew the seams up, then add some zigzag stitching to finish the seams if you wish. If the sweater is well felted you shouldn't have to worry about it unravelling.