Booze Bottle Cover Tutorial

This weekend, my husband and I went to a birthday party for a friend. We brought along a nice bottle of booze for the occasion. About 30 minutes before we left, I decided that the brown paper bag that the booze came in was not adequate. So, I got to work to quickly make a reversible booze bottle cover. This bottle cover is nicely regiftable by the recipient if they ever bring a bottle of wine or booze to a party.

I started with two fabrics from Prince Charming by Tula Pink. I cut one piece of each fabric that measured 13 inches by 17 inches. The bottle we had was rather tall and skinny, so if you are making a wine bottle cover, you may want to cut yours a little wider and shorter. I would recommend 14 1/2 by 15 inches.

Fold each piece right sides together along the long sides and sew into two tubes. Leave a few inches open on one of the pieces for turning later.




Now we have to figure out how big to make the circular piece for the bottom. Since I cut my pieces at 13 inches wide, the finished circumference of my tubes is 12 1/2 inches. One of the few things I remember form my geometry class many moons ago is that Circumference equals Diameter times Pi. So the Circumference divided by Pi (12.5/3.14159....=3.97888...) is how big I need to cut my bottom circle.

That's pretty darn close to 4 inches, so that's what I used. This is the measurement that you want at your stitching line, so you need to cut a circle that is 1/2 inch bigger. For my pieces, I needed 4 1/2 inch cut circles. If you're using the 14 1/2 by 15 inch pieces as mentioned above, cut your bottom circles at 5 inches.



Cut one circle from each fabric. You can go ahead & draw your circles right on your fabric if you want. I don't have a circle template or another easy way to draw circles, so I printed my circles onto freezer paper that I then ironed to my fabric. I frequently use the printing onto freezer paper trick. I cut my freezer paper into an 8 1/2 by 11 inch sheet, then put it in my inkjet printer shiny side up.



Sew the circles onto each tube. Both of my fabrics are directional, so I needed to pay attention to which side of the tube I was sewing the bottom onto. Since it's such a small piece, I didn't pin the bottom to the tubes. It's pretty easy to ease in any little excess with these.



I wanted the bottom of my cover to be very sturdy, so I ironed circles of peltex ultra-firm stabilizer (find it at your big box craft store) to both pieces. You could skip this step or only add one circle if you wish.



Turn one of your pieces right side out and put it inside the inside out piece. Sew the pieces together along the top.




Turn your pieces right side out, stitch up the hole in the side, topstitch around the top, adorn with a bow, and voila!



My husband thought this was fine, but he really didn't understand why the paper bag that the liquor store put it in wasn't good enough. Maybe he would have liked it more if I had used some of that potato fabric I had laying around since it was a bottle of potato vodka.

I used a piece of tulle ribbon for my bow. But if I had planned ahead more, I would have sewn a matching bow. I think this would have looked great with a lime green bow. I would have sewn a 6 inch by 22-24 inch piece into a tube, turned it right side out, closed up the edges, and tied it into a bow around the bottle. But, alas, I didn't even have an extra 5 minutes to spare.

Maybe next time I'll start it more than 30 minutes before we need to leave. Or maybe I'll pay more attention to the directionality of my tubes & sew the bottoms onto the right ends so I don't have to rip it out & sew it to the correct end. Did you catch that in picture #5? I didn't until about 10 seconds after I was done sewing it to the wrong end.