Some like it hot.....

A tea-loving friend asked me to make her a capacious tea cosy to accommodate a large teapot. 

I used 3 layers of merino wool around a resist and decorated the final layer with green, shading through grey to lavender at the top.  Before felting I added an elongated tuft of roving to the pointed top which I rolled into a rope. The final decoration was a couple of white silk hankies laid on top to give a cloud-like effect, and some shine. 

The whole was well felted and fulled - a tea cosy needs to be hard wearing. Before drying I coiled the rope at the top. 

I decided to hand embroider some simple seedheads on each side. 

I neatened the bottom edge by curling it in and hand stitching. I then added a cotton lining. Choosing a brownish colour was deliberate, as it does not show the tea stains! 

Tea cosies and pods

My daughter asked for a tea cosy for her new kitchen in her new flat. She likes polka dots, and a bit of glitter, She wants it finishing with a felt bobble on the top, which I still have to do. 

And I thought I'd make another one for some friends we visited for the weekend. They thought it looked a bit like planets on the night sky. 

I like to finish them with a cotton lining. Felt has fantastic insulating properties, and keeps a pot of tea piping hot for ages. 

I had some fun making these pods.

What are the for? you may ask. Isn't it obvious? Suspend them from the ceiling, and they make perfect little homes for air plants! 

Tea time!

I needed a large tea cosy for our house in France, and was really pleased with how this simple, bold poppy scene turned out. 

I used some dyed merino in soft greens and blue-lilacs, and then added some wisps of  silk. The poppies were cut out of lightly prefelted red merino, and the stems were knitting wool. The whole thing was made around a plastic resist cut from a supermarket bag. It seemed huge, but I worked hard rolling it in a bamboo blind until it had fulled and shrunk down to the right size. It's lined with purple cotton. 

Felt is the perfect material for a tea cosy as it insulates so well and I know I am going to get a lot of pleasure from this one. 

Here is the other side -