DIY Tea Cosy Craft - made from fuzzy pom poms!

"...Just a way of pinning down the joy of colour" - Damien Hirst 

Here's  how we got inspired & hand-made Craftea's entry for the National Tea Cosy Competition! 

If the modern artist Damien Hirst made tea cosies, it might just look something like this one! I got inspired by his various dot paintings and Ali's recent Craftea tutorial post making pencil toppers using fluffy pom poms.  Damien Hirst explained his dot painting collection as "just a way of pinning down the joy of colour" and that's exactly how I felt about making a tea cosy out of the bundle of hundreds of fluffy colourful craft pom-poms I had collected.

Untitled with black dot by Damien Hirst 1988

Craftea's Googly Eyed Pencil Toppers Tutorial



You'll need:
[300] Colorful Craft Pom Poms*  
Invisible beading thread
Darning / long needle


* Despite needing so many pom poms this amount cost under €10 as they are cheaply found online or in craft/ dollar stores in bags of 20-100.

Here's how I made this pom-pomed tea cosy.....

• Pick your colour scheme - we had some fun making a mess picking out all the different pom poms! 

• Cut approximately 60cm of invisible thread, and thread pom-poms onto the thread and secure.

• Repeat until you have enough strands of pom-poms to wrap fully around a tea pot.
  
  
  

  

  
  
  
• Using some double sided tape pieces all over a tea pot, tack on plan your layers of threaded pom-poms so they are temporarily held in place around on the tea pot.
• Using your invisible thread and needle, sew upwards through the layers of pom-poms so you begin to 'net' them all together.
• Depending on how tight the pom-poms are on the thread you may need to repeat this process sewing diagonally through all the pom poms, until the tea cosy takes shape and all the layers are securely held tightly together to cove the tea pot.
  

  

  
• Don't forget to leave a gap for the tea pot's handle and spout!!!
• Peel away gently from the tea pot and remove any bits of tape that have stuck to the tea cosy.

This teapot cosy is not perfect by any stretch (and I welcome any thoughts on how to better sew it together - perhaps there is a pattern that can be followed rather than the somewhat haphazard stitching method outlined above) .....and  no doubt there will be skilled craftspeople crocheting, knitting or engineering some fantastic entries to this national competition. But, you know what, handmaking this pom pom tea cosy really was just about  " pinning down the joy of colour" and its something I loved doing. That to me makes it worthwhile and is what creativity is all about. 

So, wish us luck with our entry into the National Tea Cosy Competition! You can come and see our entry showcased at the  Craft Festival 2013 held in the Marine Hotel in Dun Laoighre Co. Dublin on 3rd November 2013, where the winner will be announced.  

Fingers crossed for Craftea!