What can you make with a tea towel?

If you have been following my blog you will know that it's that time of the year when Higham Piecemakers have their grand reveal of the 2017 Christmas Challenge.

Well, we were given a tea towel and in line with the BBC Great British Sewing Bee, had to turn it into something else and NOT dishcloths!!  On TV they only get a short time but we were given three months, thank goodness.

I thought long and hard over Christmas and had a brilliant idea and mentioned it to the family who immediately fell about laughing!!  That would be the second challenge - wiping the smiles off their faces!

So the tea towel -

I unpicked the hems

 ruled the lines

and started counter change smocking

The first part completed.

Two years ago I went to Yarndale and for some unexplained reason I bought a pack of tweed offcuts and this gave me the idea for the next stage of the process but what I had wasn't going to be enough for my idea and I needed more. 

I was very lucky to find a metre of very inexpensive and the correct weight tweed.  Thank goodness for the Internet and soon everything was in place for part 2.

A good match

After talking to a friend who is an experienced dyer, I chose Procion dyes from this company.  With my heart in my mouth I started the process and was very pleasantly surprised at how easy it was and it now looked as if my idea would actually work.  Sorry there should be a photo here but I tend to forget when I am busy!!

Part 3 - next I needed to cut up the tea towel into four but before you even put a pair of scissors to counter change you must secure it, so two parallel sets of machining lines were made vertically and horizontally, and then it was cut.  The tweed offcuts were cut up and a paper pattern found

Pockets from offcuts

(are you getting an idea of where I am going??!!)

a jacket!
 

The next part was actually more tricky than I expected.  I had to line it although the pattern was for an unlined jacket and there was great deal of matching which I don't think was entirely successful but here is the finished item -

Goodness I do look fat

 try a side view

....  much better

I think that I could have made it a size smaller but on the whole I am very pleased and the jacket will be worn.

If you want to see what the rest of the group did with their tea towels go to the Higham Piecemakers blog page.