The very lovely girlfriend of my very best friend ever asked me to make her a tea cosy and seeing as I've still been racking my brains for what to give her for Christmas I said I'd make it for her Christmas present. Even better than that though, with my freshly cleaned desk (thanks bowl full of lemons!) I decided to try doing my first ever tutorial and share it with the world of craft blogs. It's a glamorous party that so far I've only ever been on the taking side of....so here goes! (p.s. wish me luck!)

To make your tea cosy:

1) Measure your teapot and add a couple of inches on for luck. Make up a pattern for your tea cosy based on your measurements (if you half the girth then you can just do half the pattern and make sure it's symmetrical. I'm not very good at explaining this part so I'll just show you a pic.

I measured the height and then using a big charger type plate thing made a rounded corner to meet with the girth along the bottom. As I said...better with the pictures....



2) Cut out 2 lots of your exterior fabric (remembering to place pattern on the fold), 2 of your interior fabric and 2 lots of some wadding/batting....the pouffey white stuff.



3) If you want a little loopy tab at the top, pin a little loop of ribbon to the right side of one of the exterior pieces and it will be caught up in the sewing we do in a min. Make sure the bobbley end of the pin is pointing towards the base of the tea cosy so you're able to extract it after sewing!



4) Put the right sides together of your lining fabric and sew around the top arch. Don't sew along the base of the cosy at all yet.

5) If you want to add an applique or design or embellishments to your exterior fabric, now is the time to do it. Take into account your seam allowance and position it where you'd like it to end up. I forgot this step so had to do it once I'd sewn the fabric and the wadding together.....d'oh!




6) Layer up your wadding and exterior fabrics in this order:

Wadding
Exterior fabric, right side up
Exterior fabric, right side down
Wadding.

Basically so you have a wadding sandwich with a exterior fabric filling.

Sew around the arch but not the base!


7) Open out your exterior so that it's the right way out and insert it into the lining so that your right sides are together.



8) Sew all around the base leaving a 4" (approx) gap for turning.



9) Pull the whole thing the right way round through the turning gap and top stitch the bottom catching the gap so that it closes it up nicely and you can't tell it was ever there.

10) Put tea cosy on tea pot, stand it on chair directly under weakling lightbulb in the dining room, take photos and admire your work. (p.s. I agree, the ribbon is a tiny bit too bright...next time go and buy some matching ribbon rather than raiding the 'stash'!)



Right, time for tea anyone?