I am now moving on from the third development of my teacups. That sample didn’t work as well as I had hoped and now know to continue looking at using some sort of rim for all of mu future teacups. This time I wanted to create a sample where I was using the gold cord I had also found at the shop.
- Firstly, I 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 used the new cord I had found along with the silver ribbon. I found some gold cord I will use this for this teacup to compare the two. This is shown with the images below.
- I used then used the gold cord to create the bottom of the tea cup I made a circular shape with the cord 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 gold cord for the rim of the cup also as before I had the cord going around the rim of the cup. I 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 and inside so these were all sewn together. I used a light green machine thread to do this.
- I then used hot glue to attach the gold cord to the rim of the cup which worked very well.
- Next was looking at the handle. This time I also included the lovely gold cord. 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 cord 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. although the gold cord worked well on the red tea cup I had previously handed in I believe that the silver ribbon works much better as it looks more elegant and dainty.
Olivia Cope Textiles Blog 