Easy cell phone cozy from eco felt

Uh-oh...your cell phone is ringing. Can you actually find it in the bottom of your purse in time to answer it? Has everyone in the store become familiarized with your ringtone yet? Oh if only you could just grab it and answer the thing!

Yeah. That's my mom. Which is why for her birthday I made her a cell phone cozy from incredibly affordable eco felt and grosgrain ribbon.

I could have bought her one, but she uses a pretty big purse and I wanted one that would hang safely inside, long enough she could zip her purse and not have problems. Plus I just like making my gifts. :)

I've never made a cell phone cozy before, didn't have a pattern and didn't have a clue how to blanket-stitch but that was the plan! Here's how I did it:

I started by stealing her phone and measuring its size on my selected color.

Then I cut out two equally sized pieces using all my handy rulers, grids and a rotary cutter. I made sure to leave a little extra room on all sides to allow for my stitching.

One side of the pocket would have to be short enough to see the top of the phone when it was inside otherwise you wouldn't be able to grab it easily, so that side is trimmed. In the photo I'm indicating where I decided to trim mine. The other side would have to be much longer so I could create a loop that would hold the ribbon, so that side is not trimmed.

I knew I wanted an embellishment on the front of the cozy so to get that started I freehand drew on regular lined paper one of my favorite things - a flower!

Using a Sharpie I traced around my pattern onto the felt and cut them out. I figured the flower would look better with a little depth so I cut one of the flowers smaller and cut a small round for a center.

I glued them together and onto the front of the cozy using a glue designed for felt projects. This will keep your design in place until you are ready for stitching.

The felt glue takes quite a while to dry, but it works pretty well. Of course, not well enough that I would trust everything to stick together while being banged around and squished inside a purse so I put a single stitch through the flower middle and the middle of each leaf.

Next I used pins to secure my two sides of the cozy together and followed this tutorial on blanket stitching to hold the sides of my pocket together.

For this part I didn't divide my embroidery thread so I'd have nice, thick stitches and I also chose a color that would disappear to hide any mistakes, haha! But I think it's customary for this kind of stitching to choose a color that complements and yet stands out.

Also, be sure to cut a large enough piece of thread to take you through to the end!

It was actually pretty easy!

Then I needed to make my pocket for the ribbon. I folded the felt over enough to accomodate the ribbon and blanket stitched along the edge.

Um...don't look too closely at the stitches on this part, it gave me some troubles.

Then I used a small crochet hook to push my ribbon through.

I cut a small piece of velcro and stitched it to the ribbon ends, careful to secure it and not tear up the ribbon. Using some Stop Fray or something similar would probably be helpful at this step to prevent the ribbon from coming apart on you.

And make sure you get each side of the velcro on the correct side of the ribbon!

And there you have it!

My mom loved it and also loves not having to dig around her purse for her cell phone when it rings!