A Few Finished Projects--Finally

For a while now, I've been working on some projects that seemed to take forever. First, I've been making a couple of tea cozies as a gift for a friend. Both her large for-company-only and her small daily-usage teapots are Meissen Blue Onion pattern. I wanted to make cozies for each.

The large was relatively easy, once I worked out the design. I used white linen as the outer fabric and embroidered the word tea on the front.

The trim on the bottom came from Etsy, a nice woven blue onion-patterned trim.

The lining also came from Etsy. It's a remnant of a vintage tablecloth, which I machine-quilted onto a piece of felted wool blanket for heat retention.

This one I'm liking.

The hardest was the small cozy, and I'm still not happy with it. First I wanted to use the same white linen, but as it's very easy to drip tea on a bachelor tea cozy, I nixed that. Then I tried a fabric I had only a small remnant of, and I cut it wrong! So I decided to do a patchwork with what I could salvage from the messed-up fabric and another piece I had. That took me in an entirely different direction than the blue and white I intended.

See the teapots on the blue and white stripe? That was my original messed-up fabric. Since there was a great deal of pink in the teapots and cups depicted on the fabric, I originally intended to use a pink for just the liner, but instead used it as alternating patches on the front as well. Now I'm thinking the pink has taken over, becoming the dominant fabric.

I've made bachelor cozies, with the handle and spout free, before and had no problem, but since I was using lightweight fabrics for both the outer and inner sections, I decided to add felted wool to make sure I had heat retention capability. I got a bit zealous though, putting it on both the outer and inner fabrics. It makes it seem more of a down-filled teapot jacket as opposed to a nice dressy woolen teapot coat.


I'm going to send it to Kathy as is and hope she can use it. Maybe I'll make another and send later.

The other project I've had going on lately was for my sister Daisy.

This is the fabric she used for her dining room drapes, nice and tailored-looking. And this is what I made for her wall.

Again, I'm not as happy about this as I wish I were. Since I had no fabric to go with her drapes, and since I'm trying to use things in my stash, I opted for wallpaper, which was in my stash. This picture makes it look as if it needs batting underneath. 'Cept there ain't no way I'm gonna start all over on this one! (Sorry, Daisy.)

I'm hoping to get both of these in the mail tomorrow. Kathy doesn't read the blog so it should still be a surprise for her when she gets it. Daisy does, sporadically, which makes it a coin-toss as to whether she'll see it online first.

So what have you been working on lately? Does it take y'all as long to finish projects as it does me? Do you have long lists of things you want to get done...one of these days? (I'm thinking my next project--once I get my studio back into a shape where I can actually work on something--is going to be the pillow with the flower I blogged about last.)

Hope you all had a lovely Labor Day! Ta.