With Chloe in the house, I need to cat-proof everything. Some cats are really well-behaved (cough.. Hypatia.. cough) and never try to eat anything they're not supposed to. And then there are cats like Chloe, lol. If we track in leaves, she eats them.. bugs, dust bunnies, basically anything small enough to fit in her mouth will become food if we're not careful. So having a rack of thread with loose strings sitting right at prime feline height is a dangerous situation. Solution? A thread-cozy!
You'll need: approx. 40" x 30" fabric, stick-on velcro, sew-on velcro (optional), iron on transfer paper (optional)
I chose to do mine with plain white fabric, and then iron-on a design I drew. I uploaded the design so you can use it too! You can download it here. I needed to print it on two separate iron-on sheets to get the design big enough. And make sure you flip it backwards before printing, since iron-ons produce a mirrored image :)
1. Iron your fabric. Cut out two 16" x 14" rectangles, with about 1/4" extra for seam allowance (I think that's what it's called? Still a bit of a novice lol) You'll also need 4 pieces that are 3" x 2". 2. Next, sew the little pieces into tubes, and then flip them inside out. Then sew (or attach, if you're using the sticky velcro) tiny velcro pieces to the ends of each tube. 3. Now put your two large rectangles together with the good sides facing each other. Insert your tubes in the four corners of the rectangle. They should be pinned inside of the two fabric pieces, 1.5" from the corners, with 2" sticking into the fabric. 4. Now sew along the edges, leaving room at the bottom to flip inside out. I decided to top-stitch with pink over mine, but you could just stitch up the opening if you'd like! 5. If you're using the iron-on transfer, now is the time to do it! One tip: don't leave the iron on any longer than the 15-20 seconds recommended on the transfer instructions. I kind of burnt my transfer a bit (you can see it's discolored on the right side) I think it looks kind of cool & sepia toned, but ideally I would have preferred if it just came out perfect, lol! 6. The last step is to attach the sticky velcro to the four end pieces on your thread rack. Then go ahead and attach your thread cozy! To access your thread, it's as simple as removing the velcro tab from one corner! :)
