A handmade gift for the tea-lovers in your life

When I work out at the Y with my friends, oftentimes we like to grab a cup of complimentary hot water at the snack counter and enjoy a nice cup of tea together and chat a bit before we pick up our kids from the child watch center. (I wish I could recommend the complimentary coffee, but-- not so much.)

(Once, a couple of weeks ago, we got in trouble in our group strength training class for talking too much. I'm serious. I felt like I was in high school again, where talking in class and passing notes were favorite pastimes. Oops... that was probably a sign that we hadn't made time for a post-workout tea-and-chatting session lately.)

We try to bring our own tea bags for our little tea time because they only have plain ol' Lipton next the water-- this is our favorite.

My friend Naomi is known for keeping a plastic baggie in her backpack with a few tea bags just for moments like these (and she always shares!). So when her birthday rolled around, I knew the perfect little handmade gift to make her!

I put on a movie for the kiddos and headed up to my room to whip this baby up before heading out for a little girl's night to celebrate Naomi's birthday. Getting the creative juices going always does good things for me, and I love making little things for my friends.

I've made oodles of zipper pouches over the years, and I always use Cindy at Skip to My Lou's method (she even gave me permission to sell them when we were fundraising for our adoption!).

For this pouch, I found a zipper in my stash (7.5" long) that would fit a few tea bags and cut my fabric out-- 2 pieces in each print that measure 7.5" by 4.5" each. Then I just followed the easy directions.

I embroidered the word "tea" on a piece of felt and just sewed it to one of the front pieces (flower print) before I sewed up the pouch. So simple and cute!

(Side note: this is my small-space-sewing-setup for small projects (plus my desk/sewing machine, which is in my closet). Right in my bedroom at the foot of the bed sits this trunk which holds about half of my fabric collection. I use it for all my cutting and ironing when I'm working on a project-- I do have an ironing board but I only use it for bigger projects. You can see these supplies over on my favorite sewing resources page.)

It had been quite a while since I had done some sewing, so this was the perfect little project to get me back into it... hmmm, it seems to be serving the same purpose here on my blog, too (nice to be back here again!).

Anyway, this is a super easy project, even if you don't have a lot of sewing skills (and if you're itching to learn, I have a book for that!), and it's a great one to file away as a gift idea for any tea lovers you might know.

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