Sewing Project: Teapot

Inspiration:  For my daughter's tea party themed birthday party, I planned on having the kids play "Hot Teapot".  I didn't want to use either of the china teapots or her plastic Strawberry Shortcake one.  I knew I needed to sew one that was softer.

How I Made It: I thought about just taking an online image and making it more like a pillow but ended up searching for teapot sewing patterns and came up with the following:

• I used the pattern from http://whipup.net/wp-content/images/2011/06/Whipup.netTeapotPattern.pdf
• I used the instructions from http://jointhemood.blogspot.com.es/2012/04/pincushion-alfiletero.html for putting together the body and sewing, stuffing & attaching the spout and handle.

I used multiple colored fabric (see image above).  I also machine sewed most of the pieces and only hand-sewed to close the teapot body, close the lid circle, secure on the button top and attach the lid to the body. The whole thing only took 1 evening.

What I'd Do Different:

• I'd definitely make a longer body.  Mine looks more like a Genie Lamp than a teapot.
• I'd secure the spout on a little more closer to the top so it's more upright.
• I wanted to add a little hidden pocket to put in a prize for the kid who is holding it when the music stops, but I ended up not doing that.  It probably could have been done with some material into the top and using velcro to secure the lid to the top of the teapot.

Cards: Rainbow Collage Stationary

Inspiration: My daughter had to collect magazine cutouts in various colors for school.  I cut out a lot more aside from what we sent thinking it would be fun to do similar things with her at home.

How We Made Them:  I cut out 4"x5" rectangles on colored paper - one for each color we were going to work with (red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple).  My then 3-yr old daughter helped place on images matching that color after I Modge Podge'd the sheet.  We let them dry under some heavy dictionaries and then forgot about them for a year (you can skip the forgot about them step after they dry).  From the back side of one of the rectangles I drew the diagonal and then measured about 2 & 4 centimeters from the diagonal to draw parallel lines.  Once I had all 5 lines drawn, I held the 6 cards together and carefully cut them along the lines making 6 pieces of each color.  I arranged them in rainbow order and glued them down to cardstock (5"x8" folded in half).  I glued them down, trimming where I needed to in order for the strips to sit closely together.

Alternatives:
We really like doing collage work - it's really easy for her.  However now that she's almost 5, she's a lot more sophisticated with her art and wants to add other materials.  If we were starting these today, we'd definitely have to add other materials like:

• stickers
• ribbon
• gemstones (one of her favorites)
• googly eyes
• foam shapes (at least their sticker backed most of the time)
• fabric
• felt
• anything else you can thing of that you can glue to paper!

Additional Picture: