Tea Travel Case

Steve and I have officially become tea snobs. We use loose leaf and have more than one type of tea in the house. In fact, we have at least seven regulars on the go.... It could be getting out of hand.

Anyway, what it means is that when we go away, we languish slightly, because we can't possibly take all of the tea with us. When we try to take tea with us, it's always a bit of an ordeal; have we got the infusers, the tea measuring scoop, the right mix of teas? Then, there is the practical question of how do we carry it all?

After taking several trips last year where the tea stuff was unceremoniously thrown into the top of a green bag of random food stuffs, I knew it was time to work on something else. Thankfully, my favourite blogger of all time has a pattern just for something like this! Ikat Bag had done a lunch bag tutorial in her Zip A Bag series that was pretty perfect.

I was just going to try to follow the tutorial and mess around with sizes until I got it right, but there was tricky curved seams, separating zips and loads of fabric layers that put me off. Luckily, right after the Zip a Bag series, or maybe during it, she also put out a full tutorial for the exact bag! You can see it here.

Originally I was inspired by the fabric I had used for the Document Case for Travel, and was hoping to use that for the Tea Travel Case too, but I figured I'd better do a prototype first to check that all the essential tea things would fit for travel. I'm glad I did, because while it does fit the infusers, scoop and two tins with a little room for an extra bit of tea, we would ideally like it to fit a third tin of tea, just in case.

Anyway, the prototype, which I made out of the spotty blue material (previously used in Sophie's shorts here), and scrap stuff I've had lying around for ages. Yellow stuff left from the Table Tent, some blue from who knows where (Rachel's Easter Dress maybe?) and some frog material that I think was a hand me down from 2013 somewhere. I've never used that before because there wasn't enough of it, but it was perfect for this.

I had to get a quality separating zip from Spotlight, but that was all I bought for it, so $6 on a bag is pretty good I think! I know I deviated from the recommended materials a fair bit, but I was using up stuff and it was a prototype, so I think it's ok. It turned out pretty fabulous anyway.

It's good for right now, and when I upgrade with a slightly longer zip and the final materials, we will be travelling in style with copious amounts of tea along for the ride.