One Fabric, Five Ideas: #3 Cocoa Cozy

Last week I challenged myself to create five different Christmas items using five different images from one piece of fabric. I already shared my first two ideas, the embroidery hoop Christmas ornament and the gift card holder ornament. My niece and nephew like to get hot chocolate from Dunkin' Donuts, but the cup is always a little too hot on little fingers. So here comes idea number three...

It's a cocoa cozy. I love the way that sounds... cocoa cozy. This one is for my niece. Now she can just slide it on her cup of hot chocolate and her fingers won't get too hot.

Again, here's what the fabric looks like...

And these are the five fabric circles I chose to use in my challenge. Today I'm using the mug of hot chocolate...

 Materials and supplies to make one cocoa cozy:

• Christmas fabric
• 6" x 14" piece of exterior fabric
• 6" x 14" piece of interior fabric
• Fusible web (I used Wonder Under.)
• Fusible fleece
• thread

Instructions:

First, cut a small piece of fusible web and iron it onto the back of your Christmas fabric. Make sure it covers the back of the entire image you want to cut out (in this case, the entire circle with the hot chocolate image). Do this before you cut out your circle. After it cools, cut around the 3" circle.

I didn't have a cup or cardboard coffee sleeve at home to use as a reference, so I used this template from House on Hill Road as a starting point. I added ½" to all four sides of the template. After I cut out this enlarged template, I traced it onto my exterior fabric, interior fabric, and fusible fleece, then cut out all three pieces.

Peel the fusible web paper from the back of your Christmas fabric circle, and center this circle on the right side of your exterior fabric piece. Iron in place. This piece will be the front of your cocoa cozy.

Place your interior fabric piece right side down and iron your fusible fleece piece onto the wrong side of it.

Applique your Christmas fabric circle onto your exterior fabric piece by sewing a straight stitch about 1/8" from the edge.

Lay your interior fabric piece right side up. Place your exterior fabric piece right side down on top of it. At this point, your layers from the bottom up should be fleece, interior fabric, applique Christmas fabric, exterior fabric. Line up your edges and pin together all the way around.

Sew around the outside of the sandwiched layers about a ¼" from the edge. Leave a 2" opening in the bottom for turning. Clip your corners and any excess fabric at the seams. Turn right side out and press. Make sure you tuck in the raw edges of your opening. Pin the opening closed.

Topstitch around the outside edge of the entire gift card holder about 1/8" from the edge.

Now it's time to wrap it around and sew the short end together. If you use the same cup or visit the same establishment often, you might want to use a cup as a reference to make sure it will fit properly. I overlapped the tops of the short edges by about 2" and the bottoms by about 1". Pin them together.

Sew the edges together from top to bottom in two places... first just inside the topstitching where the outside edge overlaps, and second just inside the topstitching where the inside edge overlaps (see the picture below).

Voila! You've got yourself a cocoa cozy!

No more hot cups on cute little hands.

That's three projects from one fabric. I have two more projects to go in this series, but I won't be sharing the last two until after Haul Out the Holly, which starts Monday!





P.S. If you don't sew but really want a coffee (or cocoa) cozy, go check out Mama Bee Designs' Etsy shop. She has a whole bunch of cozies for sale. I recently received one that she made with an acorn on it, and I love it!


I'm linking up:

Get Your Craft on Tuesday at Today's Creative Blog