It’s my Skipton Stitchers meeting today, we’ve got a stand at Yarndale next month and we were asked to create a piece of Tea bag art representing a piece of a well known painting. For those of you unfamiliar with tea bag art, you literally dry out a tea bag, having enjoyed a cup of tea first, then empty the leaves out, iron on some interfacing on the back to make it a little more durable, then embroider whatever you wish. They are fun to do as they are only little, so fairly quick to do. I think the idea is that visitors to the show can try and guess the piece of art and buy the teabag if they wish.

We were all given a couple of teabags ready prepped. We have a member who is very good at prepping them, and obviously drinks a lot of tea! I also suspect she uses a teapot and doesn’t just dunk as her teabags come out lighter and more evenly coloured than when I try!

I’d prevaricated for months on what to stitch, then at the last meeting they were one short for the display so I promised I would stitch one…of course I left it to the last weekend!

I’d pondered for ages on what painting to stitch, then I had an idea! On our big adventure we had visited Monet’s garden at Giverny, in my travel journal I embroidered some water lilies…

I decided to depict Monet’s water lily paintings. I wanted a watery background, I did consider painting the teabag but I wasn’t sure how it would come out. I rummaged in my textile box and found some ribbons of chiffon, one was a blue-green colour. I laid several overlapping strips over the teabag, leaving it ragged at the edges, it worked. I stitched them on with a simple running stitch in a Weeks overdyed thread.

I stitched the leaves next with DMC 4045 and blanket-stitch. The flowers are detached chain stitch with DMC 48 . The positioning of the main leaves and flowers left rather a gap at the top, so I added some French knots and straight stitches as distant water lilies which I think works pretty well.

Once I had the idea, it didn’t take long at all. I’m rather pleased with my little piece of teabag art!