TEA-DYEING FABRIC
After our recent shopping trip to Newton Abbot, when I raided the charity shops and haberdashery shop for fabrics and trims etc. for my art work, I have now done a bit of tea dyeing.
I wasn’t sure how well some of the fabrics would take the tea stain, especially the white lace curtains which are obviously synthetic and probably nylon. I thought that perhaps this plastic fabric would resist any kind of dye, but I was mistaken – they came out brilliantly!
I didn’t dye everything. I cut the curtain pieces in half, and other pieces too, so that I could keep some in their original form.
Here are the before and after pictures.
I love the tea-dyed look. It suits my style much better than the bright white. I still have enough of that to use it if required. The seam allowances that I cut off the garments are at bottom right. I dyed them in a bundle to get some variation in the depth of colour.
There were a few pieces of fabric which I didn’t cut up, but dyed them whole.
I didn’t dye the remaining pieces at all because they were fine as they were.
Here are some detail shots.
I did a bit of experimenting with some small fragments of the pink striped fabric, which was from a pair of pure cotton pyjama bottoms. On the left: the original fabric. Centre: tea dyed. Right-hand side: with the addition of some rust water.
I knew that the rust water would react with the tea and go black. These fragments (originally the pockets of the pyjama bottoms) look like dirty rags at present, but they will improve once I incorporate them into projects and add layers and embellishments, I am sure.
This has been an interesting exercise and I now have yet more stash to play with! I had quite a bit of the tea left over so I dyed some more scrap paper, which I shall cover in my next post.
