Tea Dying T-Shirts?

Has anyone ever done this with white t-shirts?

If yes --- I would be interested in how they turned out and is there a method of doing it?

TIA

Reply to
home sewer
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Method is simple: put your tea leaves in water, boil for approx.10 minutes, strain through a double layer of calico (not cheesecloth), put you T-shirt into hot dye and let it cool stirring occasionally. Rinse and dry. There should be enough liquid to make your T-shirt float freely - otherwise t-shirt will colour unevenly. Obviously, the stronger the "tea" the darker the colour of your t-shirt will be.

I see one problem with this method: tea stains are rather tough, and "before" could be removed only by chlorine bleach, so tea-dyed things became a bit lighter from washing to washing, but still had a nice beige colour. But modern laundry detergents deal with tea stains quite successfully, so before long your T-shirt will became white again.

Cheers

Tatiana

(P.S. Oak bark was also used for this purpose)

Reply to
Tatiana Sannikova

Tea as you have said can be used as I dye and I've used it many times but mainly on cotton or linen, so not sure about Poly/Cotton Tshirts. Do you have an old one or maybe a scrap of Interlock you could test?

I've also used Tea (either teabags or tealeaves) and Coffee. In a Jenny Haskins book I have, she mentions Potassium Permanganate (Condy's Crystals) to give varying shades of beige through to light browns. Of course final colours will depend on strength of dye used as well as fabric composition.

It's fun.....give it a try. HTH

Reply to
HC

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