Handmade Sewing Machine Cover

A little bit more crafting today...
Over the Christmas break I was inspired by the sewing machine cover in Stash Happy:Felt which had pretty bias tape edging and a felt scene of trees (picture of it here).  
I didn't have the materials to make the exact thing and the design of it bothered me because it was just one piece of fabric draped over the machine and held together at the sides with ties - beautiful and decorative but not that practical.  One of the reasons I need a sewing machine cover is because it seems to accumulate dust and I wanted to prevent some of that occurring - my cover needed sides as well.  Time to improvise (how unlike me... haha!).



I started by cutting the navy piece to cover the sides and top, with a little extra hangover, then rectangles of the contrasting blue to fit the sides (again with a little extra) and then achieved curved edges just by fiddling about when pinning it together and cutting off the excess corners. The great thing about felt is that you don't need to be precisely accurate. 




The felt pieces were held in place with some simple blanket stitching and cotton yarn.  I also carried the blanket stitch around the bottom of the navy sides, for decorative purposes.

When the cover was assembled, I set to decorating it but couldn't find any felt pieces in my stash that would make the design I wanted to so I went back to the drawing board and came up with needle felting.




I needle felted some heart shapes, using a cookie cutter for a shape guide, directly onto the felt sewing machine cover (tucking my foam mat inside the cover so that the felt didn't accidentally stick to the other side of the cover.

Et voila - a handmade sewing machine cover, made in two hours with materials I already had, and I adore it.

Simple, pretty, practical, frugal: perfect!