Casserole Carrier

Last weekend, when I spent so much time at Krewe Den, one of the ladies brought her appetizer in a casserole carrier.  I have made casserole carriers before but pretty much forgotten about them.  Her casserole carrier was for a rectangular casserole dish and had dowels as handles.  It was really cute.  All of this is to say that I decided that I wanted to make a casserole carrier. 

You know that I believe you can find anything on the internet if you just put in the right search criteria.  Sure enough I found instructions for making a casserole carrier on the Baby Lock website.  I took some tear away stabilizer and measured out and drew my pattern.  Then I cut out the pattern.  I went into the infamous stash of fabric that consumes our home and chose a fabric for the outer layer and another fabric for the inner layer.  I used a low loft poly batting.  I cut the pattern from each of these materials. 

The really cool thing about this pattern is that it included a pocket on one side to hold the spoon.  I would never have thought of that but what a nifty idea.

The perplexing thing about this pattern is that it has the batting but didn't require quilting.  It seems to me that when you wash it, all of the batting could clump together. 

The pattern actually said to cut it out and then sew on the spoon pocket and do your embroidery to the outer layer of fabric, and then put it together.  I changed the directions a bit.  George laughs because I can never follow directions without finding a different way of doing it.  I put all three layers together.  The right side of the outer fabric with the right side of the lining fabric, with the batting on top.  I then sewed all the way around, except for the curves by the handle.  I turned the entire thing right side out and pressed the seams.  Then I simply quilted by starting in one corner sewing diagnonally through all 3 layers, and then at even intervals sewed perpendicularly (is that a word?) until the entire surface was sewn with diagonal lines.  Then I did the same thing in the opposite direction and voila -- guilted fabric.  I then sewed the pocket onto the quilted fabric.  My theory being that the pocket sewn onto the quilted fabric would be much more secure than sewn onto one ply fabric.  Then I did the embroidery on the front.  I sewed a piece of Velcro to close the pocket and 6 inch strips of Velcro to close the side flaps.  It was almost done. 

The only thing remaining was putting in the dowels and sewing the curves.  Oops! When I quilted, I sewed the area where the dowels go closed.  Out with the stitch ripper.  I took out all of the quilting stitches to line up even with the bottom curve for the handle.  Then I started to put a dowel in.  Oops!  The curve didn't allow enough room to get the other end of the dowel in and since the fabric was quilted, I couldn't make the dowel go into the body of the carrier long enough to get the entire dowel in there.  I took out a few stitches on either end where the dowel would go.  Then I inserted the dowels and did my hand stitching around the curve and to finish off the edges where the dowel was inserted.

Voila!  That was not hard to do.  The only problems came from my deciding to quilt the fabric.  I may make some more.  I would still quilt the fabric but I would leave an opening on the end to insert the dowel.  If I make another one, I would probably make the spoon holder larger. 

I used the carrier last night.  The instructions said that it would carry a 13" x 9" casserole dish.  The quilting probably reduced the length of the carrier a bit but I was not able to close the Velcro strips on my 13" casserole dish.  I was able to close the Velcro on a smaller casserole dish.  Don't get me wrong the carrier carried my 13" casserole dish; I just couldn't close it with the Velcro.  This carrier really would carry a 12" casserole dish that was perhaps 2" tall.  The width was fine.

All in all it was an enjoyable project that I may do again.

C'est tout, mes amis:>)