Another tea cosy.

Inspired by my friend Helen's suggestion, I made my second tea cosy from my collection of ties.  I was going to make up a crazy patchwork block, and cut it into the shape I wanted, but ended up simply piecing strips of tie fabric side by side on a calico foundation.  I have some tutorials on how to make tea cosies in my collection of craft books, but I've studied them enough to know what to do, so I didn't actually consult any of the books when I made this yesterday.

 It only took a couple of hours, but the worst part was the hemming of the bottom edge; I had a choice of binding the edges or hand stitching the lining and outer cover with blind hemming.  I should have chosen the blind hemming!  As usual, I was in a hurry to finish it, and found a length of ribbon that was a close enough match to the fabrics.  Well, did I make a mess of that!   If you look closely you can see that I ended up doing two rows of zig zag machine stitch to hold it together, as the ribbon wasn't really wide enough, and the fabric edges kept slipping out.   And it pulled the sides in a bit too much.  Ah well, you live and learn.  I'll know better next time.  I've typed up a little tutorial for myself with easy instructions, because if I don't make another cosy for a while, I'll forget what I did!