How to sew a flat fold microwave basket with handles. A new bowl cozie style or is it a storage box?

Hi, welcome back to Christine's Home Affairs. Today I'm going to show you how to make a microwave bowl cozy with handles and it's a little bit different to the cozies that you see all over the place that are shaped on the sides. So this is a video that's been getting a little bit of traction lately but I don't think there are any instructions or I haven't found any so I've made this up myself. Now I'm not one that can leave things alone so what I've done is made it as a bowl cozy but I've also converted it to something else and if you want to know what that is you're going to have to watch the whole video. So this is the bowl cozy or the basket, it's a microwave basket and it's got handles on the side and when you finish using it, so you'll put it in the microwave, put your bowl in there, take it out and you've got your handles to hang on to so you're nice and safe. If you turn it back inside out it's going to fold away nice and flat so that's how it looks when you're not using it. You can pack it away in your drawer and it's not going to take up much space. So stick around, I'll show you how to make this microwave basket but I'm also going to show you how to turn it into something else because I obviously didn't like it as the basket. So stick around, we'll get straight to it. All right there's one piece of fabric for the outside, one for the inside and then I have a piece of cotton iron-on interfacing. Because this is going to be used in the microwave you do need to have cotton fabric, not anything with synthetic fibers. So this is an iron-on interfacing and it is 100% cotton. If you want to use something with a little bit more padding and the only reason I'm not is because I don't have any but you can use a cotton batting as well but it does need to be cotton and your sewing threads should be cotton as well but look I'm going to be honest and tell you that I just use polyester and I've never had any issues in the microwave. So the first thing I'm going to do is iron my cotton stabilizer to the wrong side of the main piece of fabric. I haven't cut this to size yet. The other thing we need are a couple of strips of fabric for handles. I haven't cut my fabric to size yet because I'll trim it back when I've put the stabilizer on. This is slightly smaller than my fabric pieces all the way around. I will be allowing a quarter of an inch seam allowance so I will iron that onto the back of my fabric, iron all of those and then I'll be right back. So once you've ironed your interfacing to the wrong side of your fabric and you have both pieces squared up the same we're going to make a couple of handles. So I have a length of fabric that is three inches in width and 12 inches in length. The centimeters will already have been up on the screen with the materials list. Fold the raw edges into the center and then fold that in half again and we're going to sew down both long edges. Let's go and do that now and then we can attach it to our square piece of fabric. All right that one's done we can just fold this in half and then cut it into two. So with our handles cut we can grab our fabric pieces and we'll take the outer fabric and fold this in half and mark a crease. So I have the center just here and right there. Take your handle and we're going to place that just on either side of the mark that we've made in the center. So I've left a gap of maybe a quarter of an inch or so and we'll do the same on the other side and then we'll place a lining on top and we can clip that all together. So what we're going to be doing with this is stitching all the way around making sure your handles are in place and everything's lined up nicely and we'll leave a small opening on one side. All right so let's sew from here all the way around back up to here leave an opening of about three or four fingers width. It really doesn't matter you just want to make sure with any product you make that the hole is big enough for you to turn all your fabric through. I'm using a quarter inch seam allowance as I mentioned before and just to make it a little bit easier I'll stitch with the stabilized side up then I know I can sew right beside the edge of the stabilizer. I'll back stitch here just one or two stitches leave the needle in and turn and do the same again and this is where I'm leaving an opening so I'll leave about that much and back stitch. All right I've got an opening just here we can trim our corners and we can turn this the right way out and poke out your corners as well and once you've given that a good press we can take this back to the machine and top stitch all the way around and close up that opening as well. All right I'll go and iron that and I'll be right back. All right I'm actually making two here in two different sizes so that we can see how they compare. Now that we've pressed our fabric we've got the opening along here we're going to take this back to the machine and top stitch all the way around and we'll do that for both of them. So I'll start where the opening is and I'm sewing about one eighth of an inch from the outside edge which is only about two or three millimeters. All right for this larger one we've got our handles out to the side we're going to take this edge here and fold that up and I'll fold that up about two and a half inches which is six centimeters. We'll pop a clip in on the side we'll have the same measurement on this side and we'll do the same on this side so that's two and a half inches or six centimeters and then we're going to mark some diagonal lines from this corner out. So we've got two and a half inches this way we're going to mark the same distance across here and here and on this side and then we can mark a diagonal line from this corner down to that line we've marked and we'll mark that line on all four corners. For this next one because it's a little bit smaller we obviously need to mark smaller diagonals and fold this up a little bit smaller as well. So this one here I'm going to come up about one and a half inches instead so for this piece of fabric that started out at nine inches I'm doing one and a half inch or four centimeter folds and the big 12 inch I'm doing two and a half inch folds so same again we'll be doing the same distance from the edge and if you decide to make this in other sizes I reckon just give it a go because that's all I'm doing here I'm making it up as I go I have nothing to go by as far as a pattern so I'm really just winging it so if I can do it you all can too. So now that we've marked our lines what we're going to do is take this over to the machine and we're going to sew from the diagonal at the fold down here and then along the side from here to the corner and down the side from here up here and down and from here oh and from here to there and down again and then we're finished. So I'm starting at that corner right at the fold and stitch over that top stitching I did earlier and then repeat for the other three corners. So we're finished now and apparently the beauty of this particular bowl cozy or microwave basket is the fact that it lays flat when you don't need to use it. Now I do have another one that I've shown you how to make where it lays flat when you finish using it and I actually prefer that to this but we will have a look at how this works. So take this now and we're going to turn it inside out so these little folds will just sit to the inside and we'll do the same on this side and then push those folds into the corner and you can fold that over so we're basically just giving this basket a shape now. So I'm folding at the corners and that is how it looks. So it's not really very impressive is it? Let's have a look with a bowl in there. So I don't really have bowls that are the right size but then that's where you would go and make these things in different sizes so that's just a smaller bowl. We've got a larger bowl here and look I can understand the idea with the handle so you can just take that out of the microwave like this and you're not going to burn yourself and it's certainly not going to slip out of the basket either so I can see a use for that. It's just structurally not very pretty. This is the other one so you can just fit them inside. Well you don't need to because you'll lay them flat. I don't like this one at all and I'm actually going to change the size of the sides so obviously when you fold the edges under or over whatever that fold is is going to be the depth of your basket so what I'm going to do is unpick this and I'm going to bring this fold much closer to the centre and I'll do that now and we can have a look together and see how that turns out when it's done. So I've unpicked this and I'm going to leave this pattern faced up instead this time and I'll fold this almost to the centre which will end up being two inches. It's funny because I thought to myself I should have done two inches in the first place which is five centimetres so I'll do that and come back after I've stitched everything and show you how it looks. All right let's have a look at this one. So I've made the sides much higher than they were before and of course that will make a smaller bowl cozy as well so push those sides in. I'm still not really fond of this as a microwave bowl cozy because I don't like the flaps sitting there loosely. I feel as though this needs to be stitched along the edges here but of course if you do that you're not going to be able to turn it the other way around and make it flat and if that's the case then you might as well just make a normal bowl cozy. So that's how that sits now. The handles probably could be a little bit smaller for the small bowl and that's too small find something else. So I might want to put my pins in the microwave and at least once it comes out they'll be beautifully melted and I won't burn myself. So that's the bowl cozy or the foldable bowl cozy. I do think it needs to have much deeper sides so probably no matter what size you're making you need to have at least two inches in height so the bigger you go in your fabric you can go a little bit higher as well especially if you're using a bigger bowl like this you might want something that's got more depth to it but the handles certainly help prevent anybody from burning themselves and the fact that you can just turn it back the other way and lay it flat you can store that in your cupboard and it's not going to take up too much room. Now the other use for this is to just make it a little storage caddy so what I'm going to do now because I don't like it the way it is is stitch along the bottom edge here along the bottom edge here and here and here and that's going to make this sit up nice and firmly. I may end up doing the corners as well I'll have a look. So the first thing I'm going to do is push that down and go from corner to corner and just sew really close to the edge on all four sides. So once again I'm doing a really narrow top stitch this is about one eighth of an inch or two to three millimeters then I can fold this side down and I'm just going to push those flaps down into the corner and that's actually sewing those flaps into the base of the bag and one more so I'll push those flaps down and fold it over so that's actually looking much better with the rigid sides and you can go one step further and fold up the corners and since I'm turning this one into a basket I might as well do that so bring those corners together and sew down the side as well so all I'm doing is pushing my finger into the corner bringing the edges up lining up the top edges and sewing down the side one more to go and that's much better as a basket all right so I have to say I like this much better as a boxy basket and I wouldn't put the handles on it at all so what I've done if I've got this handle left over on this side because the handles are wired up and I've sewn this permanently they're really no good to me anymore so if you're going to make this as a box don't put the handles on at all but what I've done to get rid of the handle is just folded it down so I've spread it apart folded that across and all I've done is stitched straight across the handle and all you can see is a seam along there or a stitching line along there and that's secured that handle in place so I'll go and fix that side and I'll be right back there you go I like this better than this I just yeah I just can't get my head around something so floppy and you know the other two bulk hoses that people use all the time I think they're a much better method and there's no reason why you can't put a handle onto those shaped bowl hoses either so this one here if you want something that's going to be flat when you're finished great like that if you like that kind of idea but if you're like me and you don't like the way this sits because the stabilizer is really not going to make much difference to this I can go and put a nice thick cotton stabilizer inside it it's still going to flop about so if you like the idea of a boxy bag better don't put the handles in you can make this the same way and then sew up all of those sides and the sides over here as well so there you go what did you think of that which one do you like better I have to say I really don't like the idea of this bowl cozy as a basket with handles I don't mind the handles as I said if you use the shaped basket or pattern and put some handles on that that's perfectly functional and I think it would be even better because it's got the proper shape of the bowl I like it better as just a little boxy box so that I can store my trinkets and things in it serves a better use this way than it does as a bowl cozy because my sides are now nice and rigid so yeah let me know what you think I'm not going to make any more of these I just wanted to see how they looked and because it's such a popular thing at the moment I really wanted to give this a go so there we go a microwave basket interesting idea I like the shaped bowl cozies better myself I'm going to sew up the sides on this one as well like I've done with this here and I'll end up using this for some more trinkets and things I hope you've enjoyed this video and I shall catch you next time bye for now