Tea Time Sweatshirt

I spent Sunday piecing the design on my second sweatshirt.  I picked the Grandma's Tea Party pattern.  Once again, my initial plan of attack went by the wayside once I started working on it.  I was going to piece together the teapot, cup and saucer according to the directions and omit the backing.  But as I started to cut apart the pattern, I realized there was no reason to assemble the spout in three pieces and another six for the handle.  That changed the whole approach.  The entire pot ended up being five pieces; the teacup and saucer were three.  Much more simple!

I printed the pattern on freezer paper, about 50% smaller than the original (the pot is about four inches tall, the teacup is about two inches).  I ironed the freezer paper to the fabric, folded over and tacked the raw edges, then removed the paper.  Next I machine stitched the handles, spout and lid to the body of the pot/cup, then sprayed the pieces with iron-on adhesive.  Once I figured out where to place them on the sweatshirt, I ironed them down and hand-stitched the edges.  This had only three pieces, far less than the 15 pieces to the color wheel sweatshirt.  The whole process was much faster (plus I had a feel for what I was doing). 

I thought steam coming from the teacup would be a really neat addition.  I started to embroider some in, but I wasn't convinced it looked right.  I ripped it out.  I may do some more research on that and if I come across a design I like, I'll add in steam later.

Really hard to choose which sweatshirt I like better.  I love how this came out.  People loved the color wheel when I wore it yesterday.  We'll see what people have to say about this sweatshirt.

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