Tea cosy–FAIL

This is one tea cosy that well and truly flunked out…..so much so that it underwent a complete metamorphosis!

Originally a quilted tea cosy I slaved over the patchwork. I gathered up lots of my smallest scraps and sewed and ironed until I had two squares that were big enough for my rough paper pattern. Now when I say a ROUGH pattern…I do mean a rough pattern. ok…I confess..I drew around my current tea cosy!
Then i quilted the two squares, cut around my pattern and bound the edges…by this point the patchwork was looking fab – bright colour combinations, stripes spots and flowers!

The edges bound I then tacked together the two sides to make an opening for the spout and handle…and only then dear readers did I think to try it on the actual pot…DOH!

The tea cosy was at least and inch too small and the openings for the handle and spout did not sit right….
Then came the fateful light bulb moment…I can trim it! I unpicked the two sides and then cut them down to size…I re-bound the edges and then tried it on for size….this time the rebellious tea cosy was TOO SMALL!!

A few choice words were uttered!

I was so happy with the quilted sides though that I had to think of something to do with them…the answer…pot holders/oven gloves or trivets. I added a loop of fabric to each side so that they could be hung up and sure enough they are exactly the right size for grabbing hot plates from the oven! …want a look at what caused me so much trouble?

Travel Accessory

My friend is off on a 6 month voyage around the world. Whilst being completely jealous I wanted to make a leaving present that would be useful enough to make it into the rucksack. Whenever I stay away from home the one thing I lack is somewhere to safely stow my wedding ring…so I decided a travel jewellery wallet might be just the ticket.

Inside there is a watch and necklace band. jewellery can be fastened through the loops for safe keeping. The middle section represents my first adventure in installing a Zip! A fiddly job but not as traumatic as you might think. The lower section has some slip in pockets and a loop which can be secured by a popper to thread rings onto.

I like mixing the scraps of fabric from my stash and I think these flowery fabrics work well together :-)

Quilted

Do you remember a glimpse of some cotton squares? in this post? The same square also sneaked into my ironing basket…the hours of ironing in this project almost defeated me!
Well the quilt I was making has finally been completed and the birthday girl has turned 21 (Happy Birthday!) which means I am finally safe in revealing the reveal the whole thing. This project was HUGE…..double bed sized to be exact!