Learn how to make a reusable, reversible fabric mixing bowl cover for your stand mixer. This simple beginner sewing project is pretty, useful, and totally DIY-able!

Materials needed:

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• Two coordinating pieces of fabric, at least 13″ (This pretty fat quarter bundle on Amazon will work!)
• Sewing machine with needle and thread (Purchase a best seller at Walmart)
• 1/4″ or 1/8″ elastic (like this Dritz elastic at Walmart)
• Fabric scissors (Any brand will do, as long as you only cut fabric with them. I have a pair similar to this at Walmart or at Amazon, and I like that family members can’t mistake them for office scissors.)
• safety pin or bodkin

Last year I got a screaming deal on a Kitchenaid stand mixer. It was the pro version with the large bowl and it came with three attachments. The only thing it didn’t have was a bowl cover!

I looked up the price of this accessory online and decided I don’t need the plastic one. But without a cover for the stand mixer bowl, all the little things that fly through the kitchen on a regular basis – dust, crumbs, coffee grounds – would make their way into my stand mixer bowl, so that meant I had to wash the bowl every time I was going to use it.

Well that’s just extra work. I put it away clean, so why do I want to be doing that job twice? (I don’t.) The solution is to sew a stand mixer bowl cover with some pretty fabric. Aesthetically pleasing, useful, and – hopefully – easy!

I don’t know why I do this to myself. Of course I could have found a million tutorials on “easy” fabric bowl covers, but I thought I would just cut out a circle of fabric, hem it, thread some elastic through and be done. Right?

There’s an easy way and a hard way

As I quickly discovered, cutting a large circle out of fabric wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. And hemming a circle so that it lays flat was an even bigger challenge. I do love how it turned out, but it took me much longer than it should have to make it!

After some trial and error and about 8 thousand different YouTube videos, I finally got my pretty stand mixer bowl cover sewn up and on my mixer. And then I made a couple more for friends. Now I’m going to share the instructions here because if you know what to do, making a DIY fabric bowl cover actually is pretty easy. And the easiest version I found to sew is a reversible one!

Read on to learn how to make a mixing bowl cover…

How to make reusable, reversible fabric bowl covers for your stand mixer the easy way

Note: If you scroll down, you’ll see pictures for each of these steps.

Materials needed:

Thankfully you don’t need any special materials to sew these reversible bowl covers for your stand mixer. Here’s all you need:

• Fabric, 2 pieces at least 13″ on all sides (Two fat quarters will work!)
• Coordinating thread
• Scissors
• Safety pin
• Straight pins
• Sewing clips (optional)
• A length of thin elastic – 1/4″ or 3/8″ (or smaller)
• Ruler or a large circular object you can trace around

Measure your bowl

Measure the diameter (how big it is across) of the bowl you want to cover. My mixing bowl is about 9.5 inches across.

You’ll want to add two or three inches to that size, so if your stand mixer bowl is 9.5 inches across, you’ll want a fabric circle that’s about 12 (ish) inches.

Two ways to cut a fabric circle

How can I cut my fabric into a circle that’s the correct size?

Cutting a fabric circle to size was the first challenge I encountered in my “beginner” fabric bowl cover sewing project. An ordinary office protractor is too small to make a 12 inch circle. You could use a 6″ length of string tied to a pen, but have you ever tried to do that on fabric? It seemed like it would be easy, but I didn’t have enough hands to keep everything flat and the pen moving along the fabric. Finally I discovered two methods that worked for me: there is the “math” way and the “finding something in your house that will work” way. I tried both, and both were pretty simple.

The “find something circular in your house” method: It took me a few days, but I did find a big enough circle in my house. Hallelujah!

The lid to my large non-stick skillet happened to be 12″ in diameter. A pizza pan might also work. Pie pans are usually only 9″ or 10″ round, so they would work for smaller fabric bowl covers, but they probably won’t help you make a cover for your Kitchenaid stand mixer bowl.

How to use the power of math to cut a circle to size: If you can’t find a circular object to trace around, you can use the “math” method. Take a square of fabric that’s 13″ on all sides – or at least a couple of inches larger than you want your finished bowl cover. Fold it once, then twice. You should now have a square that’s 6.5×6.5 or larger. Starting at the point that marks the center of the fabric (if you were to open it back out into a full size square), measure up six inches both directions. Use a seam gauge or ruler to measure six inches from that point all the way around and make a dot at each point until you have a semi-circle. Cut along the dotted line you just made.

Step 3: Sew the two circles of fabric right sides together with 1/4″ seam allowance, leaving a 2″ gap for turning. Turn the fabric, push out the seam so the fabric lays flat, press if needed.

Step 4: Now, on the right side of the fabric, sew another row of stitching 1/2″ in from the edge. Sew all the way around the circle; no need to leave a gap this time.

Step 5: Grab a safety pin and some 3/8 inch (or smaller) elastic. Secure one end of the elastic to the safety pin and thread it through the casing you just made. When the elastic is all the way through, stretch it so that it will hold tightly to the bowl, then overlap the ends and use a zig-zag stitch to sew them together to close the circle.

Step 6: Slip-stitch the opening together by hand. Done!