Turning French Press into a Thermos

A week ago I made a case for french press that helps coffee stay warm longer. I made this from scraps of fabric I had as leftover from recent patchwork projects, and for the batting I used an Insul-Bright batting, which is basically polyester batting, like polyfill, but with a reflective metalized layer of polyester film in the middle. I put on a zipper for tighter protection, and for the inside lining I used some purple fabric that gave off plastic-like odor when ironed and I wanted to use it up in hidden place before I get tempted to use it with 100% cotton fabrics in a patchwork.

This wasn’t the first attempt to turn french press into a thermos. Previously I crocheted a case or a cover out of a thick black and purple acrylic yarn, and sown onto it several crochet flowers made with 10 size cotton crochet thread. I went through all my photos of 2016 and ’17 (not sure when I made it exactly) but haven’t found a single photo of it fresh off the crochet hook, but you can still see it behind the new case – it’s been looking pretty worn down, it didn’t keep its height and even though the lid had a button, it just kind of sat over the top of the press, with large gap all around, so that I would in addition wrap the press into a baby blanket to keep coffee warm. And I got tired of that blanket being there on a kitchen counter day after day. And just as I made this new case for the press, we finally entered summer and had first hot summer days, at which point we preferred that coffee cools down as soon as possible, and so the case is waiting for its time to be of service when the weather gets cold again.

Addendum 11/29/2023
It turned out that this quilted case for french press didn’t work quite as well as I’d hope: the coffee would get cold before we finish it off. With the return of cold weather, this deficiency begged for remedy. I realized that insul-bright works better with an extra layer of batting (as suggested on packaging, d’oh!), and so instead of making an all new case with double batting, I went for an easier solution: a wrapper that will have both the insul-bright and an additional batting and will contribute to the case instead of replacing it. I had two coffee themed fabrics, so I cut out 4″ wide and a bit more tall rectangles of each of those, and made a very simple checkerboard patchwork. I quilted a leftover strip of cotton batting to the patchwork, and insul-bright to a plaid cotton fabric for the inside. These two layers were then stitched together with velcro strips, and two strips from jelly roll set were used for binding strip that went all around, including an incision in the top middle of the wrapper, which accommodates the handle. I was amazed how well good old Pfaff 130 handled stitching through all these layers of fabric, batting and velcro. Parting the wrapper at the spout to pour the coffee hardly adds anything to the process, so I’ll call this a success: the last cup of coffee is now well above the room temperature.

Addendum 12/8/2023
It turned out that this wrapper is reversible / doublesided. I didn’t even realize this upon completion, or intended it as part of the design, so it’s an unexpected bonus.