Sewing Tea Bags!

 I recently sewed some reusable tea bags.

Some organza type material on a little girl's dress had gotten ripped. I cut the organza over-layer off of the dress. The dress can still be worn. I had the idea to use parts of the organza to make tea bags. 

I cut some various sized rectangles.

I folded them in half and stitched a French Seam on the two side edges.

To stitch a French Seam you sew the first seam on the outside of the tea bag.

The next step is: turn the tea bag inside out and stitch the seam on the inside, completely enclosing the raw edge. This is a good way to finish seams on really unravel-y fabric. 

I rolled the top edge over twice and stitched it down to make a casing for the draw strings.

I wanted to put two loops of draw strings through the top, going in opposition to one another like this:

I used a sharp needle to make a hole in the casing on one corner. Then I used a larger blunt needle to widen the hole and thread the ribbon through the casing.

I pull the needle with ribbon half way through the casing.

Then I flipped the tea bag to the other side, and pushed the needle and ribbon back through the same hole and down the other side of the casing.

I tied the two ends of the ribbon together with a single knot.

And, repeated the ribbon threading with another ribbon on the opposite corner.

Check out all my cute billowing tea bags in a variety of shapes and sizes.