May is for Mothers

I’m so excited to finally get to share one of my happiest projects ever - my May Day Tea Cozy! Oh man, was this fun. I wanted to make something for my mom for Mother’s Day, but it’s going into Spring in the US, so it wasn’t time to whip up a cowl or mittens. Once nice thing about these sorts of occasions is that it can really stimulate your creative juices by giving you something to aim for. Let me shed a little light on my process for this one.

One of my favorite things to do with my mom is to have a lovely cup of tea and catch up. It can be total fluff or the deepest conversation - there’s just something transcendent about that quality time for me. So I thought….what can I make that’s tea related? Good thing I’ve been getting very into tea cozies lately, so I instantly knew I had to make one for her. Even when it is just her and Dad at home, they will still brew a perfect pot of tea most nights and she loves entertaining, so I thought it would be a fun gift that is not only perfect for tea, but allows you to have those long, winding and wonderful conversations without worrying about your tea going cold. The “what” stage is usually the hardest, so once I knew tea cozy, 90% of the mental lifting was done.

Next I was trying to think about what I wanted to do specifically for her. I could have approached it from a few angles, but one of my old reliables for my mom is the color green. She has always loooooooooved green, so I knew if I started with that, it would be hard to go wrong. So I started thinking what could I do to involve green and Mother’s Day and you can see how quickly I landed on a bouquet of flowers. It is perfect for a tea cozy because you can do all kinds of fun and fancy things on top and keep it more simple on the sides. Right off the bat I knew I wanted to do a bow around it to make it feel more like a bouquet than just an amalgamation of flowers.

When it came to the flowers, I really did ponder a bit. The problem isn’t so much coming up with ideas it is culling ideas! There are so many to choose from - peonies, dahlias, day lilies, chrysanthemums, poppies, snapdragons - you get the idea. Fortunately, crochet is infinitely better for flowers than knitting (sorry knitters, I still love you). The shaping possibilities are endless. The obvious choice for flowers was roses. Not only are they quintessentially “Mother’s Day,” but Mom loves them and they remind me of the many years we gave my grandmothers’ miniature roses for Mother’s Day. I’ve been making crochet roses for decades, but I did want to challenge myself to a new technique. I love making paper roses from a paper spiral. When you wind from the outside in, it gives the perfect amount of pulling in from the outside and blooming from the inside. So I worked out a few equations to vary the expansion along the spiral and I’m pretty darn tickled with the form I landed on.

Once I picked roses, I thought for a minute I would maybe just do one kind of flower, but then I thought, “Where’s the fun in that?!?” So then I had a think through some of my favorite flower variations. Here’s what I ended up with:

• Daisies - because their long petals would make a nice background to other textures of layers in the bouquet.
• Buttercups - because a pop of yellow and sweet simplicity would be the perfect contrast.
• Hydrangeas - because they have such a ruffly, 3D texture that it would give volume and contrast without making the whole thing to unbalanced.

Each of these took a fair bit of work to get them where I wanted. Lots of one step forward, two steps back, but once I got it - I got it. I was on such a role, I ended up with leftover flowers.

Sewing isn’t my strong suit, but the flowers were very forgiving to arrange and to attach. It was a very satisfying feeling to see the bouquet truly take form. It was one of those situations where the whole was so much more than just the sum of its parts. I am in love, love, love with this tea cozy. Part of it is the design factor, but mostly it’s because I designed it for my mom, with her in mind, and I can’t imagine anyone I would rather give this to.

Thank you mom for loving and encouraging me for all these years. I hope this tea cozy will be the perfect accent for your many cups of tea and the wonderful conversations that go with them. Even in my 30s, I love learning from you and aspiring to be like you more and more.

​You can check out the info on Ravelry and Etsy.

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