A Tea Party Comes Together

The teapots are all together in the center of the quilt.  All these little pieces are part of the border of teacups.

The cups and ribbon border comes together...


In the process of making all the twisted ribbon for the border there was a great deal of trimming.  I sewed a second line of stitching so that when I trimmed I had small a HST to keep. 

These made 1.75" HST.  Bonus!  Lots (over 100) of HST in four different varieties....

I drew the line at these itty bitty pieces.  I might just keep the triangles but making HST that measured 3/4" seemed a bit much.  Cute, yes.  But, still, a bit much.  Agreed?

Back to the tea party.  It's ready.  Well, it needs to be quilted, but it's pieced!  Woohoo!

Two Sweet Tea Blocks

These are the last of the unique blocks. 

Next to make are four teapots that all look alike and then, for the border, 22 teacups.

It'll be awhile before this is finished.

Lazy Daisy Teapot

One more teapot finished!  And this went so much better.  No puckers! 
Thanks to Karen for suggesting stabilizer for the back.
Thanks to Pam (at the quilt shop) for pointing out the right products (I needed better fusible too).
And thanks to Sandy (at the quilt shop) for understanding that applique is a whole new world.
Quilting certainly isn't a solitary hobby!

Tea Party block

Tea Party BOM, Block 5

2 teapots down, 3 to go

I sure struggle with applique.  I love the way it looks when someone else does it. Mine always has puckers and I have trouble keeping track of all the little pieces and it takes sooooooo long to finish one block.  So many steps... the tracing, the cutting, the fusing, the cutting, finding the right thread color (and bobbin to match!) threading the machine and then changing colors . . . and on and on and on.  I have such a shortage of patience. 

But I'm learning with each block, and I think maybe there is a possibility that I might actually enjoy doing applique by the time I'm finished with this quilt.  Maybe the results are worth it.

Sweet Tea BOM

Block 2 I totally butchered Block 1 so I'm going to do all the rest of the months and then go back to #1. By then I'll have some real incentive to fix it because it'll be what's holding up the completed quilt. I collected all the blocks for this quilt a few years ago but didn't want to be bothered with the applique. It finally called me.

I collected all the months for Sweet Tea a couple years ago.