The Great Exeter Tea Cosy Competition comes to Exeter

There is something exciting going on at The Hub on the Green and word is spreading. There is talk of tea cosies in school playgrounds, street corners and all over Twitter.

Liz Croft, who volunteers her time to run the knitting group at the hub, had a lovely idea to start a tea cosy competition and Joey Lee who runs The Hub on the Green challenged her to take it outside of the hub and make it something rather special. And she has.

So The Great Exeter Tea Cosy Competition now has a silver teapot trophy, an amazing array of prizes, an impressive judging panel and the goodwill of craft group leaders, local businesses and schools behind it.

Its aim is to get people involved in a fun community project this winter. The tea cosies can be made out of absolutely anything. They can be knitted or sewn or you can use wild and wacky materials. The only condition of entry is that they must fit on a teapot.
 The competition is open to absolutely everyone. Liz is encouraging younger people to get involved too, either at home or with their teachers. Local schools are signing up, which is fantastic.

We are also reaching out to people who find it difficult to be involved in one of the many wonderful knitting or crafting projects in Exeter. Maybe they are in hospital, have limited mobility, are in a residential home or they work full time. This is a great chance to get involved, have a bit of fun and get busy. We will do our very best to involve everyone who would like to take part.

We are going to have an exhibition of the tea cosies at The Hub on the Green for everyone to enjoy. We would love to take the exhibition to other venues too and are looking into the possibility of touring!

We have fabulous prizes including a silver (plated) teapot trophy which will be engraved with the winner's name and lots of prizes from local and national companies. The huge children’s craft box from Fred Aldous is quite something for the 'under 12 years' category.

We will return all the tea cosies to their makers after the exhibition and in time for Christmas, however there is the option of donating your cosy to the raffle. The raffle will raise funds to make this a bigger event next year.

Entries need to be in by 24th Nov.

We have an impressive judging panel including Exeter City Centre Manager John Harvey, Councillor Sarah Laws, Chief Inspector Jane Taylor and we are waiting for confirmation from some other prospective judges.