Around week 39 of pregnancy I suddenly couldn’t stand coffee. I tried for about two days to choke down the stuff, but I finally gave up & made some tea- I’ve been drinking tea ever since.
I’ll give everyone a moment to process that- I’m not drinking coffee anymore! (And I haven’t completely lost my marbles!)
I realized a tea cozy would be helpful to keep my tea from going cold in the mornings & a few weeks ago I had the sudden need to do some improv piecing, so I decided to finally make the cozy.
I used the template and basic directions from Lily’s Quilts. Which was an excellent tutorial! (Although it I were to make this again I’d tweak the template to fit my teapot better.) For the piecing I used a foundation piecing technique with my scrap batiks. (I keep all my batik scraps, no matter how small- batiks are far too expensive to be throwing away the remnants.)
There was little planning involved with the piecing, I just pulled fabric out of the scrap bin & looked to see how I could incorporate it into the design. It came together quickly & was just the freeing type of creativity I needed that day.
I knew I wanted tight quilting & I threw the pieces onto the longarm with some Warm & Natural batting scraps & did some straight line quilting approx. 1/4″ apart using Bottom Line thread in silver/gray. Some lines are closer than others, basically I just winged it, wanting the same freeing quilting experience.
For the lining I used some old teapot fabric from my mom’s stash that was a Mary Engelbreit or Debbie Mumm design from the 90s. Not my favorite & doesn’t match in the least, but hey, it’s a tea cozy lining- let’s not get too uptight about things.
For the binding I used some leftovers from some project I can’t remember but I made waaaaay too much for! I used a machine binding technique since my hand sewing time is precious.
Overall I’m incredibly pleased with how this turned out- I love coming into the kitchen in the mornings & looking at my beautiful tea cozy! And it’s been very effective in keeping my tea warm so three cheers for my idea working out in reality!