One of the snuggly comforts of winter in our house are hot water bottles. I’m honestly surprised that so few people own them these days… I wouldn’t trade mine even if someone demanded it as ransom for one of the four pillows I insist on sleeping with (a source of much mocking in our house, but that’s another story). However, I am not taunted about my fondness for my hot water bottle… because when the temperature in our corner of the world drops, my feet turn into icebergs.
I often joke and tell Ken that his marriage vows to me were to “love, honor, cherish, and warm thy feet for as long as we both shall live.” Ken doesn’t find this humorous in the slightest. Let’s just say he’s more than willing to pass the responsibility of “foot warmer” along to my hot water bottle.
Problem is, I like the water in mine REALLY hot. So it stays warm all night. So instead of wrapping it up in a flour-sack towel like I had for years, I finally decided to make a cozy for it last winter. And it was so simple! For the standard hot water bottle, I used a nice soft piece of flannel, and cut out two rectangles sightly wider and a few inches longer than the bottle. Then I sewed them right sides together, leaving the top open like a bag. After turning it, I hemmed the top edge, then turned it back inside out.
I then pinned a strip of flannel about 1 1/2 inches wide, flat around the circumference of the bag at the height the neck of the hot water bottle would be when placed in the bag. I sewed each edge of the strip to the inside of the bag so that there was about one inch between the parallel seams.
I turned it right side out again, then snipped two small holes in the front just through the first layer of fabric between the parallel seams to thread the draw-string ribbon through. You could be fancy here and sew button holes as your very first sewing step, but I didn’t bother… I’ve never been fond of sewing button holes and my ancient sewing machine has been less than cooperative in this task. My last step was to tape a length of ribbon to a short dowel and thread it through one hole, between the parallel seams and then out the other hole to form the drawstring. I also knotted the ends of the ribbon so they wouldn’t un-ravel.