Say sayonara to saran wrap! We’ve never felt good about the amount of saran wrap we use in the kitchen, but even more so now that we have half-eaten yogurts and mini-meals abandoned by our toddler. Our guilt finally motivated us to make some shower-cap style bowl covers.

What You Need

Materials cotton laminate or oilcloth (some good sources here – check the comments too) 1/4″ elastic (other sizes will work too – see note below about how much) scissors thread bowls to trace crayon, marker or pen pinking shears (optional)

Equipment sewing machine

Instructions

1. Select bowls or other circular objects for tracing. Keep in mind that the finished cover will be smaller than the bowl you trace so choose a bowl template bigger than what you want to cover in the end.

2. Trace your bowl onto the wrong side of your cloth with a crayon, pen, marker or whatever you have at hand.

3. Cut out the shape with scissors.

4. Sew your elastic to the wrong side of your cloth making sure to backstitch. I did mine about 1/2″ in from the edge. You may want to go 3/4″ or 1″. I used a straight stitch (which you can see didn’t turn out so straight). You could also use a zig-zag stitch. IMPORTANT: Once you’ve made a few stitches to hold it in place, pull the elastic tightly as you sew so that it gathers.

5. Overlap the beginning and ending of the elastic slightly, backstitch and snip off the unused elastic.

6. Trim edges with pinking shears if you like.

Additional Notes: How much elastic should I use you may wonder? Of course it depends on your bowl size. I don’t think it’s worth trying to figure out exactly how much you need – it’s easier to just start with a longish piece and cut it off at the end.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not great at figuring things out – if you have a different approach to making bowl covers or improvements to add please share them in the comments.

(Images: Carrie McBride)