Oh My - was this one Hard - A Tea Cosy ready for sewing up

When I was in John Lewis in Oxford Street, London back in October, I bought a Primavera Tea Cosy kit. Little did I realise how hard this was going to be. I have only got to the end of the tapestry sewing stage, which was hard enough. I have all the 'fun' of making up the tea cosy next! The difficulty came from the complexity of the pattern. I have provided a couple of close up shots of the stitching plus an overall shot of the completed tapestry.

Making it up as a Tea Cosy

This is the process. Firstly, I have to pin this out on a board so that it is square and then douse it with water. This will need repeating about 3 times but then I should end up with a straight item rather then the distorted version I have at the moment. The distortion comes from the stresses that the slightly different tensions give to the shape.

Then I have to do the following:

1. Sew a backing onto the item and stuff it with wadding. I have some flat, oven glove wadding to use.

2. Make a second copy of this with two backing sheets filled with wadding.

3. I then have to pin the two together, along with some braid to decorate the edges.

4. I then have to sew the whole thing together.

Whew! It will be good if I can do this.

I did speak to Charlotte at Sew existing (the makers of Primavera tapestries) who advised me on the braid but admitted that there sample version in the catalogue only has a ribbon hanging loop - as braid is quite hard! So no trouble here then!

I am starting the finishing process over the weekend so watch this space.