Time to Cozy Some Tea

     It's time for the Minneapolis Modern Quilt Guild's monthly meeting.  Our January challenge was to complete a project using our oldest fabric.  This was difficult for me as I'm pretty new to sewing as well as poor so I haven't got an incredible stash to draw upon.  My mom, on the other hand, has a horrifyingly vast enviable collection.  While helping her look around for oldest fabric among heaps of old fabric (she finally decided upon some that is actually older - as in printed flour sacks from the 1940s - versus the fabric she's held onto the longest (a pink, synthetic suiting material my dad gave her while they were dating.)  I digress...

     Anyway, while I was there I remembered a project we started together before I got my sewing machine and actually learned to sew.  I must have asked for a sewing lesson so she let me pick out a piece from said stash and we decided to make a replica of the ruffled tea cozy she used when I was little.  (I loved that thing!)  I picked this red and navy lightweight canvas that I have fond memories of from childhood...you know, seeing it around in the sewing room and such.  Turns out -we produced a ruffle, the tea cozy shell and lining all in one day and then we promptly forgot about it forever for a couple of years.

Before

     Thanks to the MMQG challenge, I rescued it from its drawer at mom's and brought it home to finish it off.  This fabric is my age or maybe a year or two older.  The only information I have about it is from the selvage, "An exclusive Brookhaven Print Pattern # 234."
     I googled this and did find a few pieces of other Brookhaven prints from the same era for sale (or already sold) on Etsy.  They seem pretty universally attractive.

     It's funny because I've liked this print my entire life.  My sister requested it for a custom laundry bag when she went off to college.  And now that I'm a modern quilter, I still think it rocks.  One of my Flickr friends said it was too pretty to cut into. I'm so glad to have a kind, generous, patient, meticulously-fabric-saving mother on my side to make this reunion possible!

After!

     So today I finally put it together (and made all sorts of silly mistakes as I did...I swear my head unscrews between uses!)  It's insulated with a layer of Insul Bright as well as a layer of Warm and Natural cotton batting.  I then felt compelled to make a quilted potholder/trivet out of one of the scraps and attached them together with a button/buttonhole.
    I looked up a few tutorials for seam-binding scallops (here and here) and that's something I'd definitely like to try more of in the future.
   

   
     It is completely functional...but I would appreciate it if no one looked too close to find all the ways it could have been more skillfully crafted... :)
     The important thing now is to distract you with some expertly brewed tea.

Mom's fabric, Grandma's tea set