Printer Cozy -- A Tutorial

I'm trying to streamline our living room and I'm almost there. We've got the bookshelves organized, video games stashed away and pretty accoutrements scattering the room. The one big eyesore is the printer. It's this boxy plastic thing that makes me cringe when I look at how sleek the rest of the room is.

So I actually made a cozy for it. I've never been a big fan of cozies -- tea, blender and the like -- but this printer needed one. I didn't use a pattern and I just followed my sewing instincts. I have to toot my own horn here. It turned out just great!

Here's how I constructed it.

Step 1: Measure all the sides of the printer. The paper tray on ours can't be removed so I made sure to measure how far it sticks out. I decided to have one panel for the top and front of the printer and one panel to go around the sides and back of printer. Then there were two triangular areas where tray sticks out from the front so I had to figure out the measurements of that.


I added an inch to each measurement for selvedge. The top front panel was 21.5 inches in length by 20 inches in width. The sides and back were 40.5 inches in length and 11 inches in height. The printer tray stuck out 5.5 inches (6.5 with selvedge) and the height was 10 inches (11 with selvedge). I made a triangle where one side was 6.5 inches and the other side was 11. Then I connected those sides to complete the triangle. I think it was around 12.5 inches.  Whew! That's a lot of measurements! Here's a visual:

Squarish panel is the top/front, rectangle is the side/back/side

Make two triangles, but be sure one is cut on the right side and the other on the wrong side.

Step 2: I pinned all the pieces together to see that it would fit properly around the printer. When pinned altogether it should look like an inside-out cozy.

This is before I realized I needed the triangle panels

With triangle panels

Step 3: Sew the long side of the triangles (the one with the 90-degree angle to the short side) to the edges of the side panels. Iron seams flat.

Triangles sewn!

Step 4: Pin the side panel to the top/front panel. Again, it should now look like an inside-out cozy.

Step 5: Sew along the longest side of the triangle and all around the pinned edge. You're almost done! I had one side of my triangle that didn't quite match up so I just trimmed it so it was flush with the edge of the cozy.

Step 6: Turn up the raw edge and iron. I placed the cozy inside-out on the printer to see if I had enough length to fold the hem up again so there weren't any raw edges along the hem, but I didn't, so I just made do. Sew along the hem.

Step 7: Iron all the sides right-side-out so it makes a box shape. Place on top of your printer. Yay, hidden printer!

Please let me know if you have any questions about making this project, as I've never tried to explain such a thing.