Celebrate National Afternoon Tea Week with Haberdashery

Next week is National Afternoon Tea Week! Although us Brits don’t necessarily need a national week of recognition for one our favourite little traditions, it’s definitely an excuse to indulge on all of our favourite finger sarnies, cakes and selection of teas! 

For this year’s National Afternoon Tea week, we want to help you celebrate it in as special way as possible. With August being the last month of summer, we think you should really take advantage of this and create your very own afternoon tea for friends and family, your partner, your kids or just yourself! By using a selection of haberdashery tricks and tips to create the perfect spread, we hope you will do National Afternoon Tea week justice and see the summer off in style.

We’ve listed some of our favourite ideas for themed afternoon teas that can be aided by (or fully dependant on) your own haberdashery creations, creative flair and of course, your imagination! 

First up we have…

Teddy Bear’s Afternoon Tea
Being in the midst of school holidays suggests that if you have kids, nieces or nephews, that you should really celebrate National Afternoon Tea week in kiddie style! Although a Teddy Bear’s Afternoon Tea may sound like it’s just for little kids, in actual fact, you can dress this up to suit pretty much all ages. 

Running with the classic Teddy Bear’s picnic theme, make sure your table is covered in a picnic blanket-esque table cloth (tartan of course) and base your finger sandwiches and cakes on a picnic. This means scotch egg sandwiches, carrot sticks, mini quiches, eaton mess mini cakes and of course, scones with cream. Add a bit of creative flair to this afternoon tea by hanging your own homemade bunting crafted from patchwork squares, a few floral themed cushion covers that you’ve made and of course, place some teddies around the table too! You can even make them a bow tie each to formal up the occasion… 

Mad Hatter’s Tea Party
In the past we’ve written an entire blog post on how to create the perfect Mad Hatter’s Tea Party so we’ll just give you a brief overview here…

The key is to make this tea party as crazy and whimsical as possible, whilst giving it a slight Victorian edge to keep it true to the story’s roots. So, a cake stand is an absolute must - either create one yourself or buy one; either way, make sure to adorn it with colours and craft fabrics to create a really authentic look. Similarly, vases full of foliage and flowers will really add to the outdoor vibes of a Mad Hatter’s Tea party - decorate the vases yourself for a truly unique look. Finally, make decorative hats for each member of the party. You can either use old, already existing hats to cover in beads, buttons, ribbons etc. onto, or make your own from a variety of different cotton fabrics.

Botanist’s Tea Party
This theme is absolutely ideal for the summer! With all the plants and flowers in full bloom around the country, August is the month for hosting a fabulous Botanist’s afternoon tea! For this, we recommend gathering as many floral bits and bobs as you can, starting with a floral table runner! To keep the theme looking rustic, we don’t recommend using a full table cloth so, check out our range of floral cotton fabrics that you can use to create your own unique runner that will be the base and foundation for your tea party! 

Of course, you couldn’t have a botanist themed afternoon tea without plenty of foliage and flowers… This could get a little expensive so we recommend that where you can, to gather all your plants and flowers from your own garden or plants. Fill jars and vases with the plants and hang foliage from pieces of string like bunting all around the room (or outside area!). For your food, give all your cakes a floral infusion such as lavender, rose and honey and ensure your sandwiches are full of plenty of green goodness! 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Afternoon Tea
This is the perfect opportunity to get as magical and whimsical as you possibly can! If the weather holds out this coming week, we highly recommend hosting this afternoon tea outside and decorate your surroundings with dangling ribbons, loose foliage, pieces of flowing material in light shades of white and pink. Cover your table with twigs, moss and delicate flowers and you can even scatter some Shakespeare quotes, written with a calligraphy pen around the table or hanging off trees/plants.

As way of invitation to this magical event, buy pearlescent shimmer card in a range of beautiful colours to create the ultimate invite for your guests and set the tone for what will be a delightful (late) summer afternoon tea!

We hope you all have a fantastic National Afternoon Tea week and as always, do let us know if you manage to execute any of our above ideas - we love seeing all your photos!