Everyone these days has a cell phone - or at least most everyone I know
does. If you like cell phones but hate carrying them around in your hand,
putting them in your pocket, or skipping them to your belt then you're
going to love Molly's cell phone cozy
Uh-oh...your cell phone is ringing. Can you actually find it in the bottom
of your purse in time to answer it? Has everyone in the store become
familiarized with your ringtone yet? Oh if only you could just grab it and
answer the thing!
Yeah. That's my mom. Which is why for her birthday I made her a cell phone
cozy from incredibly affordable eco felt and grosgrain ribbon.
I could have bought her one, but she uses a pretty big purse and I wanted
one that would hang safely inside, long enough she could zip her purse and
not have problems. Plus I just like making my gifts. :)
I've never made a cell phone cozy before, didn't have a pattern and didn't
have a clue how to blanket-stitch but that was the plan! Here's how I did
it:
I started by stealing her phone and measuring its size on my selected
color.
Then I cut out two equally sized pieces using all my handy rulers, grids
and a rotary cutter. I made sure to leave a little extra room on all sides
to allow for my stitching.
One side of the pocket would have to be short enough to see the top of the
phone when it was inside otherwise you wouldn't be able to grab it easily,
so that side is trimmed. In the photo I'm indicating where I decided to
trim mine. The other side would have to be much longer so I could create a
loop that would hold the ribbon, so that side is not trimmed.
I knew I wanted an embellishment on the front of the cozy so to get that
started I freehand drew on regular lined paper one of my favorite things -
a flower!
Using a Sharpie I traced around my pattern onto the felt and cut them out.
I figured the flower would look better with a little depth so I cut one of
the flowers smaller and cut a small round for a center.
I glued them together and onto the front of the cozy using a glue designed
for felt projects. This will keep your design in place until you are ready
for stitching.
The felt glue takes quite a while to dry, but it works pretty well. Of
course, not well enough that I would trust everything to stick together
while being banged around and squished inside a purse so I put a single
stitch through the flower middle and the middle of each leaf.
Next I used pins to secure my two sides of the cozy together and followed
this tutorial on blanket stitching to hold the sides of my pocket
together.
For this part I didn't divide my embroidery thread so I'd have nice, thick
stitches and I also chose a color that would disappear to hide any
mistakes, haha! But I think it's customary for this kind of stitching to
choose a color that complements and yet stands out.
Also, be sure to cut a large enough piece of thread to take you through to
the end!
It was actually pretty easy!
Then I needed to make my pocket for the ribbon. I folded the felt over
enough to accomodate the ribbon and blanket stitched along the edge.
Um...don't look too closely at the stitches on this part, it gave me some
troubles.
Then I used a small crochet hook to push my ribbon through.
I cut a small piece of velcro and stitched it to the ribbon ends, careful
to secure it and not tear up the ribbon. Using some Stop Fray or something
similar would probably be helpful at this step to prevent the ribbon from
coming apart on you.
And make sure you get each side of the velcro on the correct side of the
ribbon!
And there you have it!
My mom loved it and also loves not having to dig around her purse for her
cell phone when it rings!
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