Free Motion Quilted, Dye-Painted Tea Cozy

As a native Texan, I grew up drinking sweetened iced tea, but I spent my early married years in Pittsburgh PA where I became a hot tea drinker. Along the way, I learned to love tea cozies.

 Let me show you my latest.

Whenever I thrift shop, I invariably check the linens/crafts area of our local library thrift store. I've found some wonderful pieces there: hand-sewn and appliquéd quilt blocks, needlepoints, cross-stitch samplers. Recently I picked up a quilter's discarded vest project. She'd free-motion quilted and then dye-painted the front panels and then did tests of channel quilting and free motion quilting on pieces of muslin for the back. I don't know why she discarded it. Maybe she didn't. We have a high population of elderly in our area, which is why I find so many good things. Survivors have no idea what to with the left-behinds, especially hand-work, more especially unfinished hand-work.

I had to add some small pieces to the side to make the piece big enough for a small cozy. Even then, it's not that large, a 2-cupper.

This isn't a great shot, but you can see I channel quilted the sides with a narrower quilting than the piece I used for the back. I did this on both sides.

For that, I used the largest piece the original quilter made--the channel quilting. I had to add a small piece to each side of this as well, but that was caught up in the seam. 

Then I made a tab out of stash muslin. You can't even tell it's a different dye lot. (Maybe it isn't. Very likely the original quilter bought hers the same place I bought mine and maybe even from the same bolt. Is that eerie, or what?)

I didn't line the cozy. The back was quilted with batting, the front with a padding.

Kinda cool innerds, innit?



Here she is again, the final product. Don't you think it has a charm to it? The original quilter's work wasn't perfect, the dyeing is just a tad off-kilter but it has an enchanted modern-art feel to it. It's currently listed in my Etsy shop here.

And I still have enough to make another, though next time I think I'll go for a 4-cupper.