Lavender Tea Bag Sachet

Are you ready for another installment in my "fun with Lavender" series? hee hee. I guess you could say that today I've gone from SORBET to SACHETs! I really am enjoying doing different things with my lavender and today I have a little craft/sewing/stamping project to share. Using a pale blue colored organza, folding and pressing it into a teabag, sewing the seams, stamping an image of lavender and attaching a tag, I've made a quick tuck in gift for a card, or a table favor at tea with friends. This lavender tea bag sachet smells delightful using dried lavender buds and will make a nice smelling lingerie drawer sachet or to tuck in for your purse or handbag to keep it sweet and fresh smelling.

From the garden to crafting and cooking, this is largest part of the fun for me when I grow herbs, vegetables and flowers: discovering how many ways to incorporate the produce into daily uses. Even if I never harvested the lavender for other purposes though, isn't it pretty growing?

Then going outside with basket in hand I cut fresh lavender and began bunching it for drying.

Drying lavender should be done in a cool, dark and dry area. I'm not an expert but I'm happy to share how I do it. I take small rubberbands and band together small bunches of the lavender. I have some chain that I hang from a nail in the basement rafters. To the chain I attach the bunches of lavender at different levels around the chain. When drying any herb you want to be sure that the air can circulate all around the drying herb (lavender, in this case) so be sure that your bunches of lavender are not laying on top of each other. I use quite a number of chain lengths to dry the herbs so that they have plenty of room to dry properly.

And now to today's very FAST and simple craft project. I should mention immediately that the lavender I used in today's project is my lavender that I dried last year. It will be several weeks before the lavender I just harvested in the above photos will be dried for use.


Using a piece of organza I folded and pressed the organza into the shape of a tea bag. Using a very tiny french seam, I sewed my teabag together so that now it was open at both ends. Using my Stampin' Up! stamp set called "Herb Expressions" I stamped the organza using STAZON Royal Purple and STAZON Forest Green solvent ink. Be sure to put a piece of recycled computer paper or newspaper under the organza when you stamp so that if there is bleed through you won't ruin your tabletop.

Next I filled the organza tube with a tablespoon or two of dried lavender (from last year's harvest). If you want to refresh your lavender you can add a drop of lavender oil to it. I did not need to do this as my lavender is still fragrant, but it is always an option.

Now I was ready to bring both ends together, fold over and stitch the top, attaching the tag to it...just like a regular teabag.
The possibilities for these teabag sachets are endless if you grow your own herbs. You can combine many different herbs creating lovely smelling sachets.

I hope you aren't tired of my Lavender posts yet, because I still have some more uses for it.

Cheers!

Jennifer