This Loving Home.: A cozy little upcylce: Sweater to Hot Water Bottle Cover

When I slip into bed on a cold winters night there is nothing I like better than having a hot water bottle as my bed companion to warm my cold feet. And there is nothing worse than burning your feet on hot rubber if you don't have a decent cover for the said bottle.

I love everything knit so when I saw these cute knit covers I was hooked.

via Country Living

via A Crooked Sixpence (Esty)

Being a financially challenged student, $60 NZD is a bit steep for me. And anyone who has ever worn a knitted sweater could see the similarities in the two designs. So I headed off to the 2nd hand stores and picked up 3 cute knits for about $2 each. love neutrals and earthy colours so these were exactly what I wanted.

Here's a quick tutorial for those wanting to make one themselves. I'm currently sewing machine lacking so it was all hand sewing for me. You could easily pop one of these out in 30 mins with a machine but hand sewing took a little longer :P

Start by marking out the shape of you hot water bottle. I'm not a perfectionist when it comes to these things because mostly I just want to see the end result so mine were made roughly with a sharpie. To make it easier on myself, I cut the jumper open along the underarm seam to open everything up.

For this particular one I cut a front piece, two back pieces and sleeve for the neck of the bottle. I also planned on using the two original large buttons but decided against it later.

Pin your three main pieces together inside out (the 2 back pieces and 1 front) making sure you leave a gap at the top for the neck of the hot water bottle. I also hemmed this bit to tidy it up since it will be visible since the neck inserts into the hole. Now get to that machine and start sewing (or pick up that needle).

If you're copying this same design, you need to remember to leave the little access flap open. I 'designed' this one with the flap coming down over the top of the bottom piece to hide the domes.

Next get your sleeve soon to be neck piece and cut slits up to just under the folded cuff.

Slip the neck into the hole at the top of the cover and pin to secure. Make sure you pin the flaps to opposite sides so the neck of the hottie will be able to fit. While sewing the neck to the body, you need to be careful not to sew the hole closed.

If the sewing in this area is a bit messy, you can easily pull the cuff down a little further and sew in place to cover it. Next sew hems on the sides of the covering flap and put some domes on. Remember that once the bottle holds water, it will be a lot bigger so make sure you give the domes some breathing room.

Cut any loose threads and you are done. It really is very simple so hopefully my directions didn't confuse you at all. This was definitely the roughest of all the finished products. It was mostly my meager skills but also this knit was a bit looser than the others which made it harder to handle.

Here are some more glamour shots of the finished products. These guys like being beauty queens. Warm, fuzzy beauty queens.

You can see on the creamy cover that I have a zip at the bottom. It was a total accident as I was cutting this one late at night and not thinking clearly. So this one couldn't have a flap opening and instead got a zip. Sewing the zip in took a lot longer and I definitely like the other ones better.