Tea Treasures – A Hand Spun Art Yarn Tea Cosy
Lea transports us to a magical wonderland of creativity and delight. This hand spun, crocheted tea cosy is fun, creative and very functional! A great addition to your afternoon teatime.
Lea Williams of Wild Creative Textiles, creates and teaches fibre arts from crochet and knitting freeform, spinning and art yarns, wet felting, weaving and upcycling. You can find Lea on Facebook www.facebook.com/leawilliamsartstudio and also on Instagram @lea_and_elfie
Lea and her daughter Elfie feature in Issue 34 of The Wheel Magazine. I hope you enjoy this fun project from Lea!
Happy spinning and crocheting!
Kate
I adore buttons and haberdashery and have collected quite a few button tins over the years, three of them are very special to me, both of my grandmothers’ old button tins, and a tin of buttons collected for me from my mother. Some years ago, I was thinking about what I could make to display some of them on so that I could see them all the time, and I thought it would be lovely to enjoy looking at all the buttons and charms and treasures at teatime, so I made a tea cosy for my favourite teapot and stitched on some of my favourites from the button tins. I enjoyed making it so much that I made another, and another, and started collecting teapots too – each tea cosy very different and I made them to fit all the different pots.
Here is a pattern I have written for a bigger tea cosy that goes over the top of a teapot to fit a wider range of shapes and sizes, and if you would like to make one for yourself this is a very fun and creative project of carding fibres, wool spinning, and crocheting.
The pattern is written to go over a full-size teapot, but if your teapot is very small you could adjust the pattern by starting with less chains, less of the plain rows at the beginning to reduce the height and reduce stitches at the top to shape it in around the top like this one. My oldest fitted tea cosy which I’ve included photos of was smaller, made with less chains to start, and fitted snugly around the teapot, stitched around the pot leaving gaps for the spout and handle.
The project leaves plenty of room for creative expression, in your art yarn spinning and embellishments. I hope you have lots of fun with it!
Tea cosy crochet pattern
This tea cosy is felted for a thicker, firmer finish, or you could leave it unfelted if you prefer.
First spin 350g of super bulky art yarn from art batts or rolags with plenty of interesting textures.
If you are going to felt your finished tea cosy make sure you have a high percentage of wool (non super wash) carded into your batts.
Spin your yarn as two ply with a few occasional random placed beehives or big slubs here and there to give a few interesting bobbles in your crochet.
If your spinning wheel has a smaller orifice and bobbins, you can still have fun creatively spinning your colours in the thinner yarns and hold layered yarn strands together to crochet all together as a bulky yarn thickness, this also makes a lovely effect, I do this with thinner art yarns too.
The bulkier your yarns are, the firmer and less floppy your finished crochet tea cosy fabric will be.
You will need –
A 12mm crochet hook
Bulky wool yarns
A large tapestry needle and sewing thread
Scissors
A small amount of chunky wool yarn and a 6.5mm crochet hook for flowers if desired
Yarn scraps for pom poms
Buttons, beads, bells, charms, treasures
This pattern is written in UK crochet terms.
Pattern abbreviations
ch – chain
ss – slip stitch
dc – double crochet (dc 2 = 2 x double crochet stitches, not in the same hole)
st / sts – stitch / stitches
dc2tog – double crochet two together
Pattern is for one side of the tea cosy so make two of these.
Ch 22
Row 1 – dc into 3rd ch, and dc into every ch until end, turn.
Row 2 – ch 1, dc into 2nd st, dc into every st across, turn. (21 sts total in row including first chain)
Repeat row 2 until you have 11 rows total.
Row 12 – ch 1, dc into 2nd st, dc into next 3 sts, dc2tog, dc into next 7 sts, dc2tog, dc into next 5 sts, turn.
Row 13 – ch 1, dc into 2nd st, dc 2, dc2tog, dc 7, dc2tog, dc 4, turn.
Row 14 – ch 1, dc into 2nd st, dc 2, dc2tog, dc 5, dc2tog, dc 4, turn.
Row 15 – ch 1, dc into 2nd st, dc 1, dc2tog, dc 5, dc2tog, dc 3, turn.
Row 16 – ch 1, dc into 2nd st, dc 1, dc2tog, dc 3, dc2tog, dc 3, turn.
Row 17 – ch 1, dc into 2nd st, dc2tog, dc 3, dc2tog, dc 2, turn.
Row 18 – ch 1, dc into 2nd st, dc2tog, dc 1, dc2tog, dc 2, turn.
Row 19 – ch 1, dc2tog, dc1, dc2tog, dc 1, turn.
Row 20 – ch 1, dc2tog, dc2tog, turn.
Row 21 – ch 1, dc2tog, turn.
Row 22 – dc 1
Ch 1, cut yarn 25cm, pull through. Weave in any other ends but leave this one loose to attach a bell to after felting and stitching the two sides together if you’d like to.
Crochet the other side of the tea cosy the same way.
Hold the pieces next to your teapot and decide if you would like to felt your tea cosy (left unfelted will make it a much floppier teapot cover) I felted mine on a 40oc machine wash, reshape while damp and dry flat.
Decorative flowers
I made mine in chunky wool yarn with a 6.5mm crochet hook.
Ch 3 and join with ss into a circle to make the centre of the flower, ss back through circle, *ch 5, ss back into centre circle*, repeat * – * four times to make 5 petals total, cut yarn at 15 – 20cms end (to use to stitch onto tea cosy) and pull through. I felted my flowers on a 40oc machine wash, reshape while damp and dry flat.
Have lots of creative fun decorating the two sides of your tea cosy as you would like, I used a few of the crochet flowers, vintage buttons, beads, scrap yarn pompoms, and bells.
I attached a large bell to the top of mine by braiding all the 25cm cut ends together and stitching the bell to the end of the braid at the desired length.
When all is finished, damp your tea cosy well, and reshape it again while it’s damp to the shape of the tea cosy, let it dry in this position.
Make yourself a lovely pot of your favourite tea and enjoy a special teatime
