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Share the love of hot tea!
When you sit down to enjoy a hot cup of tea out of your cute teapot and that first cup is oh so hot but you finish that one and go back for a second cup, and it’s not so hot anymore:( If you can sew a straight stitch by hand or machine and use a pair of scissors, you can solve the major conundrum of lukewarm tea and be an oolong hero! Read on–it makes a great gift too! Free pattern to make an easy peasy tea cozy in 15 minutes, included.
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An Easy Peasy Tea Cozy in 15 minutes. It couldn’t get any easier. . .
If you have an old wool sweater laying around, or maybe an heirloom sweater that belonged to great grandma, put it to good use. Upcycle it into something you can keep out on your counter, serve tea with friends or even enjoy yourself on that cozy winter morning. I wrote another post that shared how to work with wool sweaters to make them felted. Here’s the link that gives specific instructions on the process as well as some other ideas for making cool stuff with felted wool. Once the sweaters are felted, they won’t ravel and are pretty dense–perfect for making a tea cozy to keep that tea piping hot!
Patterning
I put my teapot on a piece of paper and drew around it. Pretty high tech, right? But for those of you that just want the pattern, get the download below and it’ll save you a step. Compare it to your teapot and make any necessary adjustments.
Pressing on
With felted wool in hand, take a moment or two to give the sweater a good press with some steam. You can see by my photo that it started out a bit bunchy, which could affect how well the pieces will come together.
Cutting it out
Instead of laying my pattern piece on top of the sweater and cutting two pieces at once, I cut the sweater open and laid it flat. I wanted to be able to match the horizontal pattern at the seams so that when you look at it from the side, the stripe is continuous. Allow 1/2″ extra wool outside the pattern for a seam allowance. If you don’t have an obvious stripe, you could just cut two layers at once. In addition, cut a strip about 1/2″ wide by 5″ long to make the loop on the top.
Right sides together–always:)
Lay your loop on the right side of one of your pieces and pin. Make sure that it’s going to be sticking up and out the top when you turn your cozy right side out. Pin the two right sides of the cozy together with the loop in the middle, then sew. For this one, I left an opening for the spout. I hand stitched the inside hem down. Turn right side out and press with a little steam and it’s done.
Embellishments for your easy peasy tea cozy
Embroidery has intrigued me lately. For years I worked on counted cross stitch and embroidery, but hadn’t picked it up for a long time. My interest was sparked again by my daughter’s friend Kate over at Wicker Bicycle. She makes beautiful things and donates 50% of the profits each month to a new non-profit organization each month. If you want to check out her goods, click here.
Back to the project at hand:) Having a little time on a car trip, I packed the embroidery thread and the tea cozy and went to work adding a little sparkle. These simple flowers were easy to make and added about another 20 minutes to the project. It adds a nice touch, don’t you think?
I made a second tea cozy that’s a little different. I used the same pattern but inserted a center panel so I could embroider a message to my sweet tea loving friend. The side panels are from a funky green sweater that I had, so it ended up having an entirely different look than the one above. Variety is the spice of life, so they say, which allows for an endless number of sweater combinations, and designs.
Other ideas
I’ve made a lot of things out of felted wool over the years. Here’s a post from last week with a few of the ideas and a free pattern for making mittens. Or if you’re looking for a book with great ideas, check out The Sweater Chop Shop. I’ve made several things from it.
Also, Sewing Green has 25 ideas for recycling and refashioning wool sweaters into something new.
A Cozy Free Pattern:)
I hope you’re inspired to spend a few minutes and give this a try. Download my free pattern, whip up a couple or three so you can give some away and keep one too!
Enjoy!
Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
I don’t seem to see the link for the pattern for the afore pictured tea cozy.
Thanks
Hi Jane, Sorry the link was broken, but I’ve fixed it and also sent you an email with the pattern to download. Have fun making it and reply with a photo so I can see your beautiful handiwork! God bless, Sally