Now that I have been experimenting with eco dyeing and wrapping my dye stuff into my fabric I wanted to incorporate this into my consultancy work now as well. One of the colours I had chosen to use when creating my tea cups was a green to link in with the Welsh flag colours. To keep the theme running with this I wanted to use some of my fabric that I had eco dyed with using red onion skins. These fabrics have lovely shades of green in them and I think they will be perfect for this project.
- Firstly, I did have to go back on how I had made my tea cups as it has been some time since I last made these back in November/ December time. As I knew I had a certain process how I constructed each section of the teacups.
- I then drew and cut out the top and bottom pattern pieces that create the outside of the cup. I drew and cut out five tops and five bottoms. I added a 1cm seam allowance to the top parts of the tea cups also.
- I then iron the fold for the seam allowance so when I attached all of the components together this will be sewn down as well.
- Once I had done this, I got the bottom piece and then a top piece and pinned these together so I could then sew and attach the two pieces together. I repeated this for all five pieces until they were all attached like the images below.
- Once I had attached all the top and bottom pattern pieces together I then pinned these together and began sewing them together. Once both of them had been completed and now created a circular shape of a tea cup, I turned the tea cup the correct way to check that the stitching was okay and moved on.
- This time I changed the way I made the cup. I didn’t have any of the cord I had previously to make the teacups. I went to a local shop that I knew supplied some crafty pieces and luckily they had a section with ribbons and cords. I found some gold cord but also this lovely silver ribbon, shown with the images below, I purchased both of these.
- I used then used the silver ribbon to create the bottom of the tea cup I made a circular shape with the ribbon and stitched this together. To make it easier for me and so that my teacup looked professional I did add some hot glue to attached the bottom to the tea cup, which has worked very well. It is also more hardwearing than just trying to stitch it on.
- I then began looking at adding the lining of the teacup I have continued to use the plain white polyester fabric as it has proven to uphold all my previous attempts. I’m going to do six lining pieces again as this has worked best with my other cups rather than just using five. Once I drew them out and cut the pieces out, I began to sew these together as well.
- I then used the same ribbon for the rim of the cup also as before I had the cord going around the rim of the cup. I put this in place and then placed the lining inside of the cup to make sure that it fitted in nicely with the outer cup pattern pieces. Using pins I pinned the outside, inside and the ribbon together so then I can sew these all together. I used a light green machine thread to do this.
- Next was looking at the handle. This time I also included the lovely silver ribbon. I used a little hot glue to attached the top half of the handle into the seam of the teacup, this worked very well in comparison to me sewing it on like previous attempts. I then brought the ribbon down to see where I would place the bottom part of the handle and cut the excess away and then used hot glue again to attach the bottom half of the handle to the teacup.
Here in the images below is the final outcome of this tea cup. I am very happy with the colour of the fabric and the change in fabric. I did like using the found fabrics but this way I am still being environmentally friendly by using eco dyeing but also the fabrics are now my own dyed fabrics rather than someone patterned fabric. I also believe that experimenting with this silver ribbon has paid off and has refined my teacup further than previously. I will continue to develop this to help refine my making even further.
Olivia Cope Textiles Blog 