Oh, Sew Cosy!

I had an order placed for another owl tea cosy, this time in blue. Over the weekend hubby was home, so my assistant was outside "helping" him to do some car stuff on Saturday, which left me with B-man who slept for a couple of hours. Yay! It was so good! I got most of the tea cosy complete in that sleep, so it was started and finished all in one day...almost un-heard-of in my house.

I guess you want to see it hey?

And here's how I did it. Maybe one day I'll make it into a proper PDF pattern and others can use it too.

First I chose some of my awesome fabrics to use.

I also went through some bits of fusible webbing, which have been left over from other projects, to find some  bits big enough for all the parts of the owl.

It's a good idea to trace the shapes onto the paper backing with a little bit of space around each.

When I had all the shapes on there I cut each one out, but, NOT on the line.

Then I ironed each piece onto the reverse side of the fabrics. I love this particular pattern because I can use some of the smaller off-cuts from previous projects for the owls face. You can see that I've used some of these bits for similar projects before.

Next I cut around each shape, this time ON the line I drew earlier.

When I had cut them all out I laid them together to figure out the placement of each one and then started to pull the backing away to iron them in place. I always use another cloth over the top to protect my iron from any of the glue in the webbing. I know a few people who have forgotten to do this and have always regretted it.

Once they were all together I started to stitch around the shapes. I used a blanket stitch function on my machine. I have been known to do it by hand as well, but the machine is a much quicker option.

Then I added some matching button eyes.

Because I like to be able to use the teapot while the cosy is on, I added a little elastic loop to the front of the owl, near the lower edge.

I also added some buttons to the back of the owl for the elastic to loop around.

Then I laid the outer pieces and lining pieces right sides together with a layer of wadding on the wrong side of the outer piece, so it would be in the right place when I turned all the layers through at the end.

I stitched through all the layers along the straight edges.

Then I measured up from the edge and pinned where I would need to stop stitching. I needed to leave the top un-stitched as it will be joined to the other half there.

I stitched both pieces up to those pins.

When I had both pieces ready, I stitched the 2 outer pieces (front and back of the owl) right sides together down to where the pins were.

 Bit hard to see here. I had one layer of wadding away so I could see where to sew and then put it back up and sewed from the other side so I could follow my stitching line. Does that make sense? No, probably not...oh well, sorry.

Here is the other side, where I stitched the two lining pieces together, again only as far as the pins. I left open the top for turning.

I turned the whole thing right-side-out through that opening and then I pinned the layers all together to top-stitch around.

I stitched around the whole bottom edge and up the open sides. At the top of the splits I stitched a bar across (like you might at the end of a zipper), then back down the other side of the split.

I'm not sure why I left this next step 'til now, but anyway, I pinned the opening in the lining closed.

Then I stitched it closed. I did it by hand so no-one would be able to see it. It will be tucked into the cosy anyway, but I'm a bit picky like that with some things...unfortunately not when it come to things like cleaning the house...mmm.

 Once it was all stitched up I poked it inside the cosy and pushed around the edges at the top to make it a smooth round curve.

And voila, just that like it was done! Hahaha, well, in a couple of hours anyway...

So there you have it, my second owl tea cosy.

In case you missed it before, HERE is the first one.

I hope you enjoy reading about the things I've been doing.

Oh, I just remembered, a couple of weeks ago I entered some competitions on Janelle Wind's blog and I won!! Today when I checked the mail my prize was there!! How exciting! It's an apron pattern, so I'll have to get back to you when I've made one. Yay!!

Monday, Monday.

So we start another week with Hubby at work and the usual pile of housework to do. But for some unknown reason, it actually works out really nicely for once. Normally Monday is dreary and full of boring, but today was different. I mean, I still did the normal 2 loads of washing and some washing up, made brownies and dinner, but this time my assistant was really helpful. She loaded and turned the washing machine on both times and put the wet things into the basket to take outside, carried pegs, helped with brownies and dinner (we had roast beef, Yummo!!) and even collected all the dirty nappies and undies from B-man. I couldn't really have asked for more from her today. It made the day quite enjoyable and I actually don't feel as exhausted as I usually would. We even had both kidlets in bed by 8.05, which is really good for us. Plus, the weather was beautiful! Not really like winter at all. I just had the usual t-shirt and jeans, even outside and it was gorgeous in the sun! My first load of washing dried in just a couple of hours...What an awesome God we have to make days like today!!!

This is from last week sometime on a colder more wintry day, but you can see that B-man likes helping out too. Today was much more sunny and warm looking than in this day was. Normal Nana was here when we swapped loads outside today too, so B-man sat beside her on the grass in the sun and watched us get the clothes sorted.

Here they are both helping with the washing last week.

I think something else that may have contributed to my enjoyment of today may have been some stuff that went down over the weekend...my assistant had her first sleepover at Normal Nana's while Hubby and I went out for my older brother's birthday, so that was nice. 

This is the card that my assistant made for my brother. He loved it!

Plus, I designed and drafted my first clothing pattern completely from scratch and it worked pretty well, I just need to do a couple of minor adjustments. But I'll tell you the details later on in another post. But yay!

Did I mention I've introduced B-man to the potty? I think it's been a month or so now. Today he did his first poo in it and I tell you what, we all danced around like we'd won the lotto!

This is him quite happy with himself after doing a wee on the potty last week. It's so cute seeing him in the little teeny undies...

Oh, and someone ordered a tea cosy, Sweet! I'm back into things and I feel great! What an excellent end to a Monday! I hope you all had a good one too and you'll hear from me again soon with those new project details.

Goodnight!

May Challenge Day Twenty-Nine

Happy Birthday Nana!! (Just thought I'd get that in there...) I love you very much!!

I had a really good day with my kids today, behaviour-wise, I mean. Both were actually well behaved and even helpful. I finished the tea cosy and took a photo to upload.

I think it's cute enough, I might make some more...

I also managed a bit of stitching on the flowers for my quilt, but I'm not putting a photo of that because you can't really see what I've done anyway.

Tomorrow is me day again, but at craft in the morning we'll be making quilts for MAG (Mission Aid Group) which will be sent to Tanzania. Cool! I love doing them because everyone helps to do something good together, not just our own projects. I think it helps to unite the group.

Yay!

Anyway, I'd better get to bed...oh, maybe a few more stitches first...goodnight!

May Challenge Day Twenty-Eight

Monday Monday....

Usually the day for visiting with friends, but not today. Today we stayed home and I worked on the tea cosy. I don't think I've ever made one before, but it's pretty much done, and it's really cute. Anyway, I'm actually going to go now and stitch some more of my quilt before it gets too late. I might try and post a pic of the owl tomorrow.

Goodnight!

May Challenge Day Twenty-Seven

I can't believe it's day 27 already! Woah! I feel like I'm losing time or something...

Today was great! I went to church, had lunch with my church family and then came home to some craft. Yay! I got onto making the prize for my facebook competition winner...an owl tea cosy...so cute. I also got my quilt panel ironed.

Oh!! Janelle Wind replied to my comment on facebook today....I'm totally star-struck! I immediately got the giggles and all my worries went away...hahaha. How funny is that! Most exciting thing to happen to me in a while obviously.

Anyway, tomorrow is Monday and there's always a list of things to do on Mondays, so I'd better get to bed so I can "get up out of bed, have a yawn and scratch my head and say Thank you, it's a brand new day..." Sorry, the song popped into my head. I'm off to bed, nighty night!