Today's project: tea staining

I had some unbleached muslin that I wanted to add a bit of color/age to for some cat toys I'm making. Tea staining works to add age and character to natural fabrics but won't work on synthetics. Someone might be interested in the process, so I took pictures:

Step 1:



Boil water. For each yard of fabric, you should use about 4 cups of water. Pour into a bucket or bowl and add a couple of teabags for each cup of water you used. I put in seven bags of regular old Lipton tea. Let it sit for ten or fifteen minutes until it's dark brown. To help set the stain you can add a tablespoon of vinegar to the water.

Step 2:



Add your fabric and get it all wet. Use a spoon if necessary to push it down. As with any kind of dyeing, the more you swirl the fabric around and loosen it up, the more evenly the color will be spread. If you leave the teabags in at this stage they will make darker spots on the fabric, which you might like.





Step 3:



Wait. The longer you leave the fabric in the tea, the darker the color will be. It will always appear lighter after it is rinsed and dried, so let it sit until it's a bit darker than you want.







Step 4:





Rinse. Squeeze out the excess tea and run the fabric under warm water. It will lighten considerably.










Step 5:





Add a couple of drops of dish soap to your rinse water to get the rest of the tea out of the fabric. Rinse thoroughly.











Step 6:





Spread out to dry on an old towel. You can dry it in the dryer but it may leave a bit of stain behind.






All done! Now I have several pieces of darkened fabric to use. Mine came out with a fairly even tan tone, which works for my purposes. Good luck applying this technique to your own projects.