Last week I finished my first tea cosy, and I admit I’m a little bit in love with it. It’s something I’ve been thinking about making for a while but never quite got round to it. In my mind I knew I wanted to do something involving flowers, perhaps along the theme of a garden (nice and vague!) so I just had to find the right pattern.

I looked at various patterns, many of which would make a  a single size cosy, but I was worried they wouldn’t be quite the right size for my teapot. Eventually I found this pattern on a blog called ‘Why Didn’t Anyone Tell me?’; it was a really easy pattern to follow which included photos at different parts of the pattern.

I started by chaining enough to fit around the base of my teapot, but I added a couple extra just in case and I’m glad I did. The only stitch used for the teapot itself is a Half Treble Crochet (or Half Double Crochet in US terms), and it works up really quickly.

For the flower embellishments I used the pattern for flowers by Bella Coco as I wanted to do smaller ones than those in the pattern and ended up doing twelve. It took me a while to figure out how best to place them on top to make sure they were balanced and not too crushed, but eventually I was happy with how they were placed. All was going well until I dropped the darning needle just as I was about to start attaching the final flower and I nearly cried! It was the only one I had, and I was so determined to finish it that evening that I forced the yarn through a smaller sewing needle and finally attached the last flower.

I used Sirdar Bonus DK in Emerald and Red, a 4mm hook for the main cosy and 3.5mm for the flowers. I’m really happy with how it turned out and my sister has already put an order in for one; I’m planning to make one with different colours of flowers, perhaps with a few butterflies thrown in. Watch this space!