Piecing A Teapot: From Drawing to Fabric

 I showed you the drawing I came up with to figure out how to make a teapot. This is how I put it together. There's the body of the pot, given a rounded shape by sewing triangles on to the corners of a square-ish shape. I also have the lid and handle ready.

 

When playing with angles, it can still surprise me how much is lost when it's sewn together. That lid looked gargantuan when it was hovering over the pot, but is barely bigger once it's attached.

 

The spout has been sewn on, as well as the knob on top of the lid. Now the handle is ready to be attached and we have the final teapot..

And A Red One!

 For the less experienced piecers, here is a more complete tutorial. This time the spout is going to be on the right side and the handle on the left.

I started with a big square. I decided to use the oversized triangle method.
 

This is what it looked like after the triangles were sewn on. I sliced off the little red background triangles (which came in handy for making the handle).

   

This is the rectangular background fabric for the handle. One important tip when you are working this way is to always remove the extra bit of background and fold back the triangle you've just sewn on. That way you can attach the next triangle properly:

With all the corner triangles sewn on, extra background removed, the unit ironed and the edges all tidied up.The next step is to add the U-shaped bits of the handle.  And some background triangles added to make it curve nicely.

 

The handle and the body of the pot are complete.

 

I've sewn my lid.  It seemed oversized to me, so I wanted to check what it would actually look like when sewn on. I put the pieces right sides together and pinned in place along the quarter inch mark. This is not accurate, but it will give you an idea.

 

And folded back, I decided yeah, I didn't want the lid this big.

So I cut the lid down at a jaunty angle and attached it to the pot. Think I'd have liked it better if I'd gotten it centered better, but oh well. Also sewed the knob on top. You'll notice for this second teapot that I'm not following the exact same construction order as I did on the blue pot. So long as it goes together, that's all that counts.

 

And here's the handle sewn into a background strip the same width to make it easier to attach.
     

To make the spout, I cut out a rectangle of the teapot fabric and layered it on top of a same-width strip of background fabric (both facing right sides up). I cut the slant for the bottom bit of the spout.  And then had the perfectly matching angle to sew these bits together.  After I had that on, I made a couple of slices to get the red fabric spout-shaped.  Sewed on the bit of background fabric at the end of the spout.

After I got that on, I straightened up the edge and added background fabric along the top. For whatever reason, I thought that spout was going to be too big and I wanted it at more of an angle, so I sliced into it some on the left side. As it turns out, I misjudged how much I was going to lose in the seam and so now the spout looks undersized.

This one looks a bit whackier than the first one. Have to admit I may do a classic Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do manuever and change the spout. I know I am always saying to people that I love all their blocks and they should just let them be and not remake them even when they see the imperfections. Why is it so much easier to accept others' wobblier efforts than it is to accept your own?