Teapot Options

In Quilting Arts Gifts™, fiber artist Sue Bleiweiss showed how to make a “teapot” box/sculpture that can stand on its own or hold another gift inside. The magazine featured a teapot with a surface made from paper tea bag wrappers, but Sue says this project can be adapted to use other layered fibers, so long as they can take the heat from the iron.

Consider using things like torn pages from magazines or old books, pieces of lace, candy foils, vintage linens, and even old stamps. Here are instructions for using painted paper towels. The pattern, full supply list, and complete instructions for assembling the teapots are in the special Quilting Arts Gifts™, on select newsstands now.

(Pictured here are, left to right, teapots made from painted paper towels, a vintage tea towel, and silk velvet.)

Painted Paper Towel Teapot

Supplies used:

• White, good quality, 2-ply paper towels
• Jacquard Dye-na-Flow paints
• Spray bottle filled with water
• Paintbrushes
• Wool felt 18” x 22”
• Misty-fuse – 1 or 2 packages
• Parchment paper or a Teflon pressing sheet
• Chiffon scarf

Painting paper towels is an easy process. Using 2-ply quality paper towels will insure that your towel doesn’t fall apart when you start adding paint.

1. Cover your work surface with a piece of plastic drop cloth and then lay out several pieces of paper towel on the table.
2. Spray the paper towels lightly with water. You don’t need to soak them, just a light misting is sufficient.
3. I like to use the Dye-na-Flow paints right out of the jar. I just dip in the paintbrush and then start painting right on the paper towel. If you’re using more than one color on a towel keep in mind that the paint will spread so use colors that work well together when mixed.
4. When you are done painting, leave the paper towels to dry completely. Once they are dry, I like to press them with a hot iron to smooth out any wrinkles. 
5. To make the surface for the teapot with the painted paper towels fuse a layer of Misty-fuse to one side of the wool felt. I like to tear my paper towels into random shapes but if you prefer a more organized approach to your surface you can certainly use a pair or scissors or cut them into pieces using a rotary cutter and ruler. Place the shapes on the wool felt. It’s not necessary to completely cover the wool felt in this first step.
6. Cover with a piece of parchment and press with a hot iron to fuse them to the surface. Add another layer of Misty-fuse to the surface, cover with parchment and press.
7. Now you can start to fill in some of the spaces left empty by the first layer with more torn paper towels. Cover with parchment and press again to fuse this second layer to the surface. You can repeat these steps adding as many layers as you like to get the look you want. I used 3 layers for my teapot surface. 
8. When you have completed the layering process add one more layer of Misty-fuse cover with parchment and press.
9. For the very last layer I added a sheer chiffon scarf and pressed with a hot iron to bond it to the surface. Once the chiffon scarf was ironed into place I took the entire piece to the sewing machine and using a double needle and two different colors of rayon 40-wt. threads stitched some wavy meandering lines over the surface.