A (not) cool wee project

In the wake of the last few patchworky/quilty projects I’ve been working on, I’ve accumulated quite a stash of fabric scraps that are too small to really be useful, but too big to throw away, so I’ve just been collecting them all together in a “might come in handy one day” pile.

Anyway, now that the weather is cooling down, my hot water bottle has come out of storage (because I’m weird and don’t really like electric blankets), and I was thinking the other day that it would be cool to make a quilted cover for it (plus a good way to practice a bit more free-motion quilting before I return to my experimental quilt).  And then I came up with the clever idea of sewing all those little scraps together randomly to make the cover.  Well, not quite all – it actually took a lot fewer scraps than I expected, so my wee basket is still pretty full.
Unfortunately, I underestimated just how much bulk sewing two pieces of quilted material together adds to seams, so what I thought was a generous sizing (I traced round the hot water bottle then added a few centimetres extra all the way round) turned out to be a very tight fit, which meant my original plan of turning the cover inside out via the neck failed (because again I underestimated how bulky quilted material is, and made the neck too narrow to pull it all through) so I ended up having to unpick the seam at the base instead and turning it inside out that way instead, and then (badly) hand-sewing the seam closed again.  It was also a very tight fit getting the hot water bottle in through the neck, but with a bit of a struggle I did manage it (though if the bottle ever bursts and I have to replace it, I think I’ll end up just throwing out the cover and making a new one, because there’s no way I’ll ever get it out again).
However, a fun wee project, I learnt a lot (even if it was all what not to do next time), and I reckon the result is pretty cheerful:


Now I just need to wait for another cold snap so I can test it out 🙂