One
of the quilt shops we visited on our recent mountain trip gave me a free pattern for soup bowl koozies. All you need are two 10 1/2 inch squares of fabric and a 10 inch square of quilt batting. Add some darts and a couple of straight quilting lines and its done.
Your soup bowl fits down in it while being microwaved. Then you can easily pick the hot bowl up using the koozie, and in my case, take it to the couch to eat in front of the tv. The koozie protects your hands from the heat of the bowl while you eat the soup. Even if you aren't microwaving the soup and are just getting it out of a pot on the stove or crock pot, the koozie would make eating a hot bowl of soup more pleasant.... and cozy! They are completely washable and dryable, so any spills would be no problem.
I made these three as gifts to take my coworkers as a thank you gift for covering for me while on vacation.
These are easy to make and would make nice Christmas gifts, especially if a bowl was included with them. I found THIS YOU TUBE VIDEO if you want to make some. If I were still buying teacher's gifts, these would definitely be on the list. I plan to make a few more for some of the people on my list.