My husband and I love to go for walks in the evenings, and we occasionally have dinner dates with couples who live near enough to us that we consider walking to and from dinner. I have yet to feel comfortable putting rising yeast dough in a backpack for a 2 mile walk to a friends house (often I agree to make my homemade yeast rolls as our contribution to dinner). However, I will soon be baking a potato, tomato casserole dish that is much more portable. We still can’t just stick the casserole dish in a backpack and strike out on a walk, though, so I went scouring for a casserole dish carrier tutorial and finally settled on modifying the Casserole Dish Carrier Tutorial found at Love of Sewing. Why modify? Since it is dinner for 4, I plan to cut the recipe down and bake it in my 9 x 9 casserole dish. That will cut down on the tedium of carrying it across town, too.
*Note that this post is not a tutorial in itself, but a brief description of the modifications I made to Love of Sewing’s Casserole Dish Carrier Tutorial.
Casserole Dish Carrier
In the tutorial, it calls for wider widths of fabric to be cut than I used so that the carrier will fit an 11 x 17 casserole dish. Below I will briefly outline the modifications I made to the tutorial to make a carrier for my 9 x 9 casserole dish.
Casserole Dish Carrier – Handle Modification
I started with making the handle for the carrier. I cut my fabric and batting 11 inches wide by 39 inches long. I used the base of my large colander for the circle form on the ends, and I sewed a half-inch seam allowance as recommended.
Casserole Dish Carrier – Handle Fit Check
I folded down the tabs for the handle by 1-inch and used chopsticks as test handle pieces to get a feel for if the size was to my liking (I also used the chopsticks to help press out the corners when I turned the fabric right sides out after sewing the seams).
Casserole Dish Carrier – Test Fit Check
At this point I also considered how long I wanted to make my next fabric pieces by draping the handle over the casserole dish and taking measurements. I decided to cut the next section to 10.5-inches wide by 33-inches long.
Casserole Dish Carrier – Assembly
At this point I got my husband to help out a bit. We didn’t have any peg board on hand in the house, but he had a bit of phenolic in the garage that he was able to cut to size to be a sturdy base to set the casserole dish on.
Casserole Dish Carrier – Fit Check and Evaluating Where to Place Velcro
Another modification we chose to use was to sew the outside of the flaps for the handle shut to help capture the metal rod that we used for the handles.
Casserole Dish Carrier
Casserole Dish Carrier
Casserole Dish Carrier
I know I am biased, but I also think that my husband makes a handsome hand model as he shows off the fancy carrier. 🙂
Casserole Dish Carrier – Looks Good (My Husband, the Hand Model!)
The project took a couple of hours to assemble, and I am really looking forward to being more mobile in our local dinner dates. And in case you are curious, this is what the potato / tomato casserole looks like. Click on the image to download the recipe.
Potato Tomato Casserole
I think this post might give you the impression that my favorite color is cobalt blue…
Linking up to Monday Makers and Main Crush Monday (buttons to the right).
Thanks for showing how to modify the carrier and for the recipe. I’ll try it. I looked to see if you had the recipe for your yeast rolls but couldn’t find it. Maybe it will be in a future post? I also saw several of your quilts and they’re awesome!
So cute and useful! Did your hand get tired after carrying it for 2 miles? Hopefully it wasn’t too heavy!
It looks nice Yvonne, the size modifications work perfectly. The fabric is so fun!
What a great carrier! Definitely more functional than a back pack for carrying casseroles 🙂 And of course your carrier should match your dish!
Years ago I decided I wanted a casserole dish carrier, and bought one…only to find a pattern and tutorial for one a few days/weeks later. I think I’ve used the carrier maybe 3 times (I think mostly because we try to have people come to our house for things like Thanksgiving and xmas). What I want now is a nice pie dish carrier that won’t damage the crust, which probably means more structure, but I’ll at least try to make my own before buying some expensive pie box with a nice leather handle. Anyway, I like the changes you made to this carrier for a smaller dish, it looks very cozy.
Great idea and i love the fabric you’ve used!
That’s a great carrier! And it looks like it could be made to fit a particular size dish too
A very nifty project! I love the way the side wings wrap the casserole and hold it securely in place.
LOL – I did notice your gorgeous kitchen and a distinct fondness for blue Yvonne.
I have that very fabric sitting on my quilt room floor, waiting for a patriotic something to come to mind for it! I love your casserole carrier. That would certainly make all those church potlucks easier, too. Thanks for the thought!
Yvone! How cool is that! Isn’t it great to be able to fashion “kitchen wear”? Not really a question when one can easily tailor make anything! Kudos to you! Have a lovely day!
Love that fabric and I really love your kitchen backsplash, beautiful!
the carrier is really nice, think I need to make one of those for each of my daughters, I do wish your recipe wasn’t in a format that would require me to buy a new program for my computer.
Oh have fun at the dinner date 🙂
Such a great idea! I love how you modified it for your needs. That’s one of the best parts of making your own items.
But who doesn’t love a nice Tardis blue? 😀 I love the idea of a casserole carrier – alas, my husband hates most casseroles, and no one invites us to dinner anyway. Shucks darn, but I’ll just have to stick with quilts, and admire your dinner party accessories from afar. 🙂
I have to admit that this project didn’t interest me half as much as your kitchen did! I love the blue backsplash with the white cabinets! That’s always been a favorite color scheme of mine. For the kitchen in my first home (that I bought when I was single) I did a Van Gogh palette with white cabinets, yellow faux finished walls, and bright cobalt blue accents everywhere. (I think we have the same tea kettle). There were also Van Gogh prints on the walls. The cobalt with just the white looks so clean and classy.
First of all I have to say that I love the look of your casserole and am off to read the recipe in a sec (potatoes and tomatoes are 2 of my favourite things to eat). Second love is the fabric – looks very Van Gogh to me? And I do like the idea of the carrier too, but we never go out to civilised dinners like that! I am thinking it might make a good present for somebody though, with some food in there too and then they can reuse the carrier for their civilised dinner dates.
You look great with that casserole dish carrier and you’re so handy with modifications! I can do it but it takes me 10x’s longer than someone such as yourself. I love the fabric and yes, before you got to the end I ended up saying to myself, “I know her favorite color has to be blue…” haha