Tea in the Rose Garden Tea Cozy: Bow and Tea Bag

I added more to the Tea Cozy yesterday. I added the pink feather stitch down the rose print seam, I'm going to be adding pink beads to the tips too. Nice and simple yet adds a little CQness and sparkle. I also added in a bow that is couched down with different color sweetheart roses. I'm also going to add little ribbon stitch leaves all around it too. I'm just kinda bouncing around going from one idea to the next and leaving the finishing of each idea for later! LOL

I also took 1 strand green floss and stitched on the lace fern to give it shading. I made it look darker to lighter by the lower leaves have 3 stitches fanning out and the upper ones only have a single stitch. I'll be adding a lot more to this lace too, just have been putting it off! LOL

Then I had been thinking for some time about adding a tea bag somehow but the right idea just hadn't gotten to me yet. Then last night I saw Kerry's Tea Bag and thought that was the perfect idea! I didn't do exactly like she did but I did use fabric (mine is organza) and beads in the inside. I just did a basic fold over pouch in organza, nothing fancy and added a mix of beads different colors and sizes and shapes. I wanted it to be like a fancy Chai mix since Christina and I both enjoy Chai Tea a lot. Christina even mixes her own Chai and likes to experiment with ingredients.

The bottom of the bag is loose and can flop, I wanted it to be like that so the beads can be tossed around. I couched some pink size 10 tatting thread for the string, and put little lazy daisies to look like a bow attaching it. For the tag I used silk ribbon in satin stitch and put a sweetheart rose on top and stem stitched around the ribbon in a pink floss that I also satin stitched around the tea bag in long stitches. I just love how it turned out! Just perfect! And it filled in that odd space nicely! My main thing about this tea bag was that I wanted it to look pretty like a fancy-pancy tea bag with a gourmet artisan tea. One time Christina had bought me some tea like that and it had organza for the bag and pretty colors of flower petals in with the tea, so that was my inspiration. In fact I still have one of those tea bags saved for looks because it's just so pretty! LOL

Tea in the Rose Garden Tea Cozy

Progress photo of the Tea Cozy for a friend!

I got the idea for this rose from the Tea and Roses print in the center. What I did for the stem was take 3 strands of size 5 Perle Cotton and thread it and bring the needle to the top then I twisted it and brought the needle to the back the distance I wanted it. Then I got another needle with only 1 strand of the size 5 Perle Cotton and couched along the twisted stem. Then I added the leaflet stems using stem stitch adding 13mm green silk ribbon in ribbon stitch leaves. The rose I made using 7mm pink silk ribbon in ribbon stitches, I wish the look of it had turned out a little better but my hubby says it looks beautiful so I will leave it as is, no rose is perfect, I'm not perfect, so I will accept it. If it had been truly awful looking I would tear it out, but it is not awful, just not perfectly what I had in mind. I also added fallen petals sprinkled around using ribbon stitch also in 7mm ribbon. Under the rose is a piece of lace that I thought looked like a table cloth or doily under the teapot.

Almost finished beading in the butterfly!

What do you do? Inspiration, Motivation, and Oz! LOL

What do you do when inspiration and motivation to create seem to have flown out the window?  Lately it seems the mood to create has left me.  My garden is blooming like crazy and I'm enjoying taking photos of the flowers again, but CQ and Tatting have been pushed aside with no desire to pick it up.  I'm happy to be taking lots of pretty flower photos and tons of them are on my Honey Bee's Photos blog!

I also took a trip to visit family and it was fun!  I had packed some tatting for the airplane but I never picked it up once!  LOL  I did get that round of chains finished weeks ago on the doily but I still haven't taken a photo of it!  LOL  It's like procrastination set in and got out of control! LOL

I did pick out some pink and yellow fabrics, inspired by my roses.  I think I better just buckle down and make a block at least...sometimes it's like giving your battery a jump-start to just DO IT.

How do you overcome the blahs?  Do you wait for it to come or do something to jump-start yourself again?  It seems that not even eye-candy on Pinterest is helping!

Sometimes I can figure out what's demotivating me, but I'm having a hard time putting my finger on it this time.  My last block was really hard to work on and it's been harder and harder since then to work on things.  I had the idea to crumb piece a block and make it really "crazy" inspired by "The Patchwork Girl Of Oz", since I've been reading through all the Oz books and love them, but I hated the results.  Hopefully the pink and yellow rose inspiration will do the trick.  Hmm, maybe it's color!  I know I get energized seeing the bright colors in my garden, and my bright colored blocks are the ones that are making me happy, so maybe that is what was demotivating me.  Also the color of the crumb pieced reject is what really put me off...it's anemic looking to me and just upsets me to look at it, I hate it, I need to throw it away and get it out of my workspace! HA!  The only way I would do it again would be if I picked a rainbow of jewel toned colors, and in fancy fabrics too, that's how I "see" Scraps in my mind.  She's bright and spunky and whimsical, and she's a bit crazy (of course being crazy patched) but very fun and has lots of energy.  Hmmm, maybe I will work on this idea after all for next month.  Scraps my not be able to drink tea with us, but she'd be a fun addition to the tea party!  In Oz that never stopped the ones who didn't eat from hanging out with the meat people who need to eat at any dinner or feast. ;-)  I could see myself doing a whole Oz series after reading so much about them.  I'm almost done with the set, I just finished "The Lost Princess Of Oz" (in which Scraps is one of the main characters again) and started "The Tin Woodman Of Oz" after that there are only 2 books left.  I think it's really neat reading Baum's letters in the intros of each book and in "The Tin Woodman Of Oz" he talks about how the Oz books are for all ages, the young and the young at heart.
It's funny because I didn't start reading the Oz books because of the movie or anything, in fact I never really cared for the old movie that much and I HATE the song that everyone loves, it's like nails on a chalk board to me kinda like the titanic song...HAHAHA ;-P  Anyway the way I got into reading them was searching free books for Kindle and I read Baum's "The Sea Faries" and loved it and then when searching for more books everyone raved about the Oz series so I figured I would probably love those too.  And I do.  Then it just so happened that the new Oz movie came out in the midst of reading them!  LOL  I really loved the new Oz movie too.  It may not be perfectly true to the books (they never are) but I loved it and all the nods to the books and I felt it was true to the spirit of Baum's Oz.  I think he would have loved the movie!  It's so neat how what once could only be seen in the imagination is now able to be put into movie form!  I could see how now the ideas in the Oz books could be made into movies and really work!  The porcelain girl was so cool looking in the movie! Wow! Ya, Baum would be impressed.  Live, yet porcelain!  So cool!  I digress...LOL

Okay I better get to work if I have a hope of getting a block done this month! ;-)  At least I'm feeling better to have talked about it!  Thanks for read/listening!

CQ Tea Cozy: Tea in the Rose Garden

A friend who LOVES tea's birthday is coming up, and since she uses her teapot practically everyday I thought a Tea Cozy would be the perfect gift. I'm still going with the bright pink and green that she loves and doing a Tea in the Rose Garden theme. Since I know she'll be using it all the time I want to embellish a little more practically, that is also the reason I used a couple extra print fabrics on the outer area.
Click Here to see all the posts for this Tea Cozy

Tea in the Rose Garden Tea Cozy: Roses and Bees

I love how this Tea Cozy is coming along!

Finally finished that bead embroidery butterfly I had started working on!

I added this rose trellis seam treatment. It really is an edging from an Aunt Martha's transfer, I just traced part of the edging onto tracing paper and pinned it on the seem. I stitched in the thread parts with silk thread, 2 shades of green. The middle trellis area is light green and I used 2 strands of the silk thread it was a monster to work with doubled up, I wish I had just used floss for that part...live and learn! LOL Then the vine part I just used a single thread of a darker shade of green silk. Then I tore away the tracing paper and added 7mm Sweetheart roses instead of the daisies that were there originally and added 3 leaves pointing out in 2mm ribbon stitch. Also I changed the lazy daisy leaves into 2mm ribbon stitch leaves. Instead of knots I added size 10 pink beads. I just love how that turned out, just so pretty!
I also used the "bug" stencil to draw in a couple of bees and beaded them in using a variety of beads all different colors, sizes and types. I choose amber colors so they would be honeybees instead of bumble bees. They are just so adorable I'm going to have to make them again!

Tea in the Rose Garden Tea Cozy: Front Finished

Well here it is! The front of the Tea Cozy with the embellishment finished!

I added simple stitches, beads and sequins to the lace to add color. I also used some square buttons with beads added to the middle.

I finished adding beads to the feather stitch. I also added a flight path for the butterfly and added some dark pink beads to the center of the floral print fabric.

I had used a vintage image from a CD I bought and added writing to the center with an editing program and printed it onto fabric. Then I just sewed it down applique style. I also started working on some pink clover tatted edging, I've never had to turn corners before so I need to look up something. Anyone have any clover corner links at hand? I'm tatting it up in size 10 Flora thread and wow am I not used to that large of thread anymore! It's so huge and bulky, but it looks nice around the label so I'm going to do it. And I'm waiting on a lovely hand painted Mother of Pearl button to arrive in the mail to add to a corner.

Tea in the Rose Garden Tea Cozy: Working on the tatted label frame

Slowly...ever so slowly am I working on the frame for the label! At least I figured out how to turn a corner, I did the little mirror thing but I don't have one that is mirror all the way to the edge so I just guessed. I figured out if I make that corner chain smaller and join to the bottom picots of the clover that it will square for me. Not the most fancy corner in the world but hey at least I did it right!?!

Tea in the Rose Garden Tea Cozy: Finished...Completed...Done!!!

To see the whole journey of the Tea Cozy Click Here

Here it is out in my garden!!! AND you can see my spring roses blooming!

It has taken me a month to complete from start to finish! I couldn't even say how many hours of work is in this piece.
I'm also printing out a booklet of the Tea Cozy's Journey for her to read and enjoy seeing how it was made. The booklet is made basically by copy and pasting my blog posts into a Word Document and then printing it out and adding to a report folder.

Bead Embroidery Butterfly on Tea Cozy

I got the idea to use a stencil for a butterfly shape and I'm filling it in with beads. Mostly size 15 seed beads but I used 5 size 11 pearl colored ones for the head, the tips of the antennae and bottom wing tips. The stencil is one normally used for paint stenciling.

To see more of the Tea in the Rose Garden Tea Cozy
Click Here

Tea in the Rose Garden Tea Cozy: Couched Bow

I'm slowly but surely working on the Tea Cozy more. Today I added in ribbon stitch leaves in 2mm silk ribbon to couch the bow even more. Also I added some little french knot buds to the upper part of the bow.

Tea in the Rose Garden Tea Cozy: Back Finished

I finally finished the tatted frame for the label...now the Tea Cozy is a late birthday gift but I know she won't mind and will love it whenever she gets it! LOL

I added a hand-painted button, painted by Jill, it was her very first rose painted button and she thought it not that great but I think it's beautiful so she sent it to me! Isn't it the perfect touch?! I also added some clear glass leaf beads that have gold veins. Now it is ready to sew up!