Decorative Egg Cozies from So Jane

Want to keep your soft-boiled egg all warm and toasty until it’s ready to be eaten?

Then do what you’d do for your kid (without the “eating it” part)–put it in a sweater!

So Jane, by Hollie Keith, features a ton of projects that celebrate the author Jane Austen and her work. The projects are divided between fangirl crafts, such as “I Heart Mr. Darcy” pillows and embellished bookmarks, and Victorian recreation crafts, involving materials like doilies, patchwork, and silhouettes, that evoke the feel of living inside a Jane Austen novel.

The Decorative Egg Cozies project uses scrap fabric and simple applique techniques to create a portable little warmer for the soft-boiled egg, a popular Victorian-era breakfast. My children each own a chicken, however (Fluffball and Arrow are their names, and they are possibly the most indulged backyard chickens currently in existence), and soft-boiled eggs, made from eggs taken warm directly from underneath a comfy chicken butt, are one of THEIR favorite breakfasts, too!

Of course, our breakfasts are less a sedate Victorian-esque affair, and more of a “Put down the LEGOs and come eat! Wait, your hands are filthy–go wash them! No, they’re still filthy! Yes, I CAN tell that you didn’t wash your hands! Fine, you washed them already–now go wash them again so that they’re actually clean! Hey, get away from the LEGOs–breakfast is getting cold!” affair, and since soft-boiled eggs are meant to be served immediately and eaten hot, our family has found So Jane‘s decorative egg cozies to be quite useful.

The project as written is already a green one, using felt (you can choose wool or recycled plastic) and fabric scrap embellishments. It’s quite amenable to substitutions of materials, however, and my egg cozies made from scraps of felted wool sweaters (here’s how to felt a wool sweater in your washing machine) work perfectly. I’d suggest lengthening your stitch if you’re sewing together two pieces of felted wool, since the fabric will be so thick, but otherwise you can follow the tutorial as written. I declined to add any appliqued embellishments to either egg cozy, since the felted wool that I used for each is interesting enough on its own, but it’s certainly a possibility.

Store your wool sweater egg cozies in the cabinet with your egg cups, and I’ve discovered that an added advantage to having them is that you can cover each egg cup with its egg cozy while it’s in storage, keeping the egg cups from getting dusty.

And yes, next I WILL be making the quilt with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy appliqued on the front. True love must be celebrated, y’all!