keeping in with tradition...

I first started working with recycled tea bags back in 2002.  My partner drank alot of tea and being an avid collector of all things weird and wonderful I started collecting and drying his tea bags.  Then on an excursion to the Queensland Art Gallery in the final year of my studies (2002) I was all intrigued and inspired after seeing a large quilt hanging on the gallery wall, somehow the two came together starting with Quilt seen in my 2010 Expressions of Love Exhibition.

Expressions of Love explores the connection between mother and daughter, grandmother and granddaughter, an unbroken chain of wisdom and knowledge shared across the generations.  It looks at how that sharing was celebrated with a cup of tea and how the generations before us wouldn't discard anything that would find a life in new ways. Working with the recycled tea bags, utilising the skills that have been passed down to me, I was constantly reminded just how fragile the past is and how important it is to preserve these wisdoms for the future.

After the success of spinning the tea bags with the ladies down at the spinners and weavers group I set myself a task, to sew, spin and knit one thousand tea bags.   Keeping within the traditional use of the spinning wheel, spinning wool = knitting, crocheting etc., I decided to knit the one thousand tea bags using 20mm size knitting needles (after sewing them first on the treadle). 

Here's a sneak peak of the results, the tea bags have knitted up deliciously and I can't wait to see the piece hanging on the gallery wall.

From this...

 

To this...

 

2-3 hour sessions of sewing on the treadle yielded 20-25mtr lengths and only one small ball -inbetween the size of a squash ball and tennis ball.  In the beginning I began to sew and spin two to three balls at a time before knitting, after the first few hundred metres I needed to break this cycle for sake of my posture, neck and back niggles, and sew, spin and knit one ball at a time.

 

50 stitches were cast on...

 

Knitting the garter stitch...

 

And here's a little teaser of the finished piece...

 

Even though the knitted piece looks relatively small in this image, the overall piece is reasonably large when stretched out, due to open knit of the garter stitch with the 20mm size knitting needles.