Muslin Heart Tea Bag - Valentines 2016

This Valentines project evolved over a couple of years and it is one of my favorites.

I'm a crafty person with a needle and thread/yarn but I do not have a green thumb. Almost all of my attempts at gardening end with bugs or some disgusting form of rot resulting in the inevitable death of a plant. So when I tried growing spearmint a couple of years ago the results were no surprise. The first year of mint farming ended with an infestation of the biggest and greenest caterpillars I have ever seen and the second year was a battle with mint rust. Undaunted, and with faith in the power of "third year a charm", I managed to keep the mint healthy for an entire summer. I was finally able to harvest and dry a crop of mint leaves.

I did not start growing mint with a valentines project in mind. That came about when I was researching how to make mint tea and remembered this "Muslin Heart Tea Bag" pin on my "Crafty Hearts" Pinterest board. Valentines 2016 was born!

Notes on making muslin tea bags:

Using the FISKARS X-Large Squeeze Heart Punch I made a cardboard template. This was the perfect size for a tea bag.

I traced hearts onto a doubled piece of muslin with a fine point air and water soluble disappearing ink pen (my new favorite toy!) making sure to leave room for a 1/8" seam allowance between tracings. I did not cut the hearts out before stitching.

I machine stitched around the traced lines leaving a small opening. I cut the hearts out and stuffed them with tea leaves but now there was too much bulk and I couldn't machine stitch along the line so I finished stitching the bags closed by hand. If I make these again I would hand sew the entire tea bag for stitch consistency.

Notes on packaging:

The container is a 2oz round steel tin from Papermart.com.

The labels are Avery #22961. Avery has an incredible online site. It used to be so difficult to design and print labels. Now it's easy peasy.