Laminating Teabags to Fabric

So here started a long journey. The first teabag fabric was laboriously laminated to a backing cotton teabag by teabag using gel medium. I decided to add stamps of the word smile and the camera image. And then a layer of gel medium was spread over the top so that the finished effect was of aged leather

I had been granted permission to use Steve McCurry’s portraits as long as I acknowledged the source so I decided to use the portraits in oval portholes with a photo of Steve in the middle. The quilt is called Through the lens of Steve McCurry. Steve is an acclaimed photojournalist how has done a lot of work in Asia for National Geographic so I was delighted to be granted permission to use his portraits. I have to admit I also learnt a lot about photography and choosing a subject in the process

My rule for using the teabags was that they were all naturally used teabags. I collected them, dried them, then opened them and removed the tealeaf residue. It is quite a time consuming job but these days I always have a container on hand for the next teabag project.