A Craf-tea Christmas, Day One

This is the time of year I start to feel especially crafty, or craf-tea, as some of us like to say, so I thought I'd share some of the things I'm working on this week. Over the weekend, I was at an antique mall in a booth filled with folk art when I saw some cute little sequined and beaded felt ornaments hanging on a Christmas tree. "Hmmm. I could make that. And I could make it in the shape of a teapot," I thought. So, I did!

I began by pulling out some cardboard templates I've had forever. These came in a craft kit and I saved them so I could use them for other projects. If you don't have templates like these, no problem. Just go online and search for "teapot template" or "teapot quilt block" and you will find some similar shapes you can use.

In my fabric stash were some rectangles of fleece, felt and wool. Even though I *know* I'll end up doing pink ornaments, I wanted the first one to be Christmas red, so I chose the red fleece and traced and cut out two matching teapots. While softer than felt, it's a little harder to cut, but I did like the fact the two thicknesses were so substantial I didn't even have to add padding to this piece.

My sequin stash was low, so I headed to the Jo-Ann store, where I picked up quite a few craft goodies I've been needing (more about that tomorrow). There I bought the huge "value pack" of sequins, 3.8 ounces of them, for $3.99. This pack had sequins in a wide array of colors and sizes. I already had lots of glass seed beads to use for attaching them.

I used plain old embroidery floss (three strands) for sewing the two fleece pieces together, and I left the back plain, although overachievers would no doubt want to embellish both sides. I used a straight stitch and tried to make them look a little wonky for more of an old-fashioned, primitive folk art look. A pretty piece of vintage grosgrain ribbon was tied into a bow, a loop sewn at the top for hanging on a tree or embellishing a package, and there you have it! (Finished size: 4 inches tall, 5-1/2 inches wide)