July 29th, 2011 
Lisa Johnston 
When I was in high school, you would have thought my mom won the lottery when whomever it was came out with these plastic/elastic bowl covers. I don’t really think they intended for my mom to wash them out, hang them up to dry, and reuse them, but that’s what she did.
Now, my mom is the best seamstress I know. Why she never made her own, I have no idea, but here’s a very easy, short tutorial on how to make reusable bowl covers!
If you do not have access to laminated fabric, you can use nylon fabric (it will not be as air tight) from your local fabric store, or, you can visit Fabric.com for PUL fabric. PUL fabric is BPA free, and used in the hospital and cloth diaper industries.
These instructions are for a cover for a 7-10 inch bowl. You will want to use at least a 12 inch bowl as a pattern. The rule of thumb is to make sure that your pattern bowl is approximately 3 inches larger than the bow you’d like to cover.
Reusable 7-10 inch Bowl Cover
Materials Needed:
PUL (polyurethane laminated) Fabric
1/4 in (or whatever you have) Elastic
Thread
12 in Bowl
Pen
Rotary Cutter
Time Needed:
Beginner – 20 minutes
Intermediate – 12 minutes
Advanced – 5 minutes
Place your 12 inch bowl on your laminated fabric and trace with a pen. You can use a fabric pencil if you’d like. I used a pen because it’s what I had handy!
Use your rotary cutter for a nice and neat line. If you’re good at cutting with scissors (which I’m not), that’s fine too! If you’d like to run your serger around the edges, that’s fine, but laminated fabric does not ravel.
Set your machine to the Three Step Zig-Zag Stitch. I set mine to about 4.5 width, 3 length. Laminated side up (I would suggest using a teflon, non-stick, sewing presser foot (not pictured, but you can see it in the link), tack down your elastic (one stitch forward, two stitches backward) about 1/2 inch from the edge of the fabric.
Pull taught and stitch all the way around circle. If you are unsure how to stitch elastic, it can take a bit of practice, but basically, you pull your elastic as you’re stitching. When you get to the end, back tack as you did in the beginning. Snip your threads, and flip your bowl cover right side out!
There you have it! This bowl is about 8 inches, so this cover will fit a bowl anywhere from 7-10 inches perfectly!
Once you’ve used it, you can wash it out in the sink or you can wash it in the machine. I WOULD NOT RECOMMEND using scented detergents or any fabric softeners as fabrics hold on to scents/perfume and they can transfer to your food.
Do not use in the microwave!
Disclaimer – It literally took me longer to write up this blog post than it did to make two of these bowl covers.
Posted in 
Tags: 
Love these! Thanks for the easy tutorial! Can’t wait to make some!
Oh that’s a fantastic idea! I hadn’t though to try to make my own. Much better than those plain old plastic elastic covers, and much easier to wash and re-use I’m sure as well.
Genius idea, and so simple!
Simple, functional and cute. Even I could do this!
Shannon recently posted..Black Friday Sale