Microwaveable Fabric Bowls

Microwaveable bowl to use at work

As summer flies by, I’ve been hiding from the heat as much as possible (that's estivation!). I still don't have my sewing machine back but I’ve done some work on a new quilt. It’s a surprise – so I’ll have to wait till it’s done to write a post. In the meantime, here’s an on-going project.

A few months ago I made some microwaveable hot pads or bowls. These are easy to stitch up, useful and make great gifts. My first fabric bowl was a tester. I used some funky fabric that I wouldn't care if it ended up being scrapped.

Largest fabric bowl

There are many tutorials online. I used the one by Kathy from Tamarack Shack.  As Kathy advises, it’s imperative that you use cotton fabrics and batting. Anything metallic could create sparks!

Her instructions are for 8”, 10” and 12” bowls. This first bowl is the 12” version. It’s really big as you can see from the image with the bowl in it. That’s a large cereal bowl – my son’s favourite! I use both the bowl and the microwaveable bowl at work. It’s great for reheating my lunch and then taking it to the table or my desk.

The fabric bowls match the table runner

After the first experiment worked out, I made one of each size to go with the orange peel table runner I gave my friend Heidi. Aren’t they pretty all nestled together? They really went well with the runner.

Nestled fabric bowls for Heidi

I made a couple more for our kitchen, since the kids kept asking me when would we get some!

Smallest fabric bowl 

perfect for single servings

I really like the small 8” version. It’s perfect for a single serving of something yummy.

Medium 10" bowl

The medium 10” microwaveable bowl pictured here is great to use with our soup bowls.

Great for dinner bowls

Large fabric bowl adapted for dinner bowls and serving dishes

I adapted the large 12” pattern to fit our dinner bowls as well as serving dishes by making the four darts a little shorter.


What I learned:

• One word of caution - I think that the fabric bowl traps the heat from the microwave. Try warming something up for a little less time that you would normally. I've stopped using them under the bowl I use to make gravy (yup, my nasty secret is out!) because it always seems to overflow. That's also a good reason to use fabrics that hide minor spills. They do, however, wash up really well
• These microwaveable fabric bowls are easy to make, but I'm not very good at making more than one of anything. I love learning new things but when it's no longer new, I get the "been there, done that" blues.
• I did purchase some fun fabrics that will be perfect for more of these fabric bowls. Hopefully I'll get to them. They are great to make when you want a project where you don't want to have to think too much.
• Is it really going to be an ongoing project? We'll see - there is no time limit to ongoing :-) 

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