Among all the Christmas craziness I realized I never posted about the &stitches secret Santa exchange I did! Please note, this post contains affiliate links as indicated by an asterisk.*

My partner was Aimee from Daisy Eyes and I embraced a tea theme for her package and included a reusable mug and sleeve, octopus tea infuser*, and a mug rug. My tea cup cross stitch pattern is consistently my most visited post and I wanted to play around with it a bit. I made the pattern into an EPP pattern and made a mug rug for it. I know it probably would have lent itself really well to being a foundation paper piecing pattern but I still just can’t wrap my head around how to figure out which order to sew the pieces together.

The pattern worked out well but a lot of the pieces were smaller and more fiddly than I expected. I simplified the pattern as much as possible and combined pieces into the largest shape they could be, but the tea bag strings are still pretty little to work with.

I also made a cuff for a reusable mug to go with it. These ended up being gifts for a lot of people this year, I’ve made 8 of them and the pattern is really great. I’ve made coffee sleeves in the past but I love that this pattern doesn’t use a button or velcro closure, it has a felt layer and is stretchy enough to just slide onto the mugs. I get the $2 reusable mugs they sell at the Starbucks register and they fit perfectly. You can find the free pattern at favecrafts.com

Turning my cross stitch pattern into an EPP pattern was a fun experiment and I definitely want to try it out more in the future.

I also made this little hexie pin which I absolutely loved and was the inspiration for the laser cut hexie pendant that you can get from Beadeux. I used 1/4″ hexies and then glued them to a felt base and attached a pin.

I’m also including the EPP pattern for the tea cup if you want to attempt your own. There’s a few things to keep in mind –

– A lot of the pieces look really similar so make sure you label the backs before you put the fabric on them.
– The finished square is 8.5″. This can be scaled easily enough but it would be very difficult to work much smaller than that.
– For the bigger shapes you will either need to baste through the paper or glue baste.

Download the PDF – English paper piecing tea cup pattern

There are more free patterns to download here, and patterns to purchase here at my Etsy.

If you stitch up one of my patterns, I’d love to see it! Tag it on Instagram with the hashtag #hugsarefunstitches