Thursday, May 31, 2007

Dyeing experiments

I have been dyeing (Ha ha ha!) to have a go at tea dyeing for a while. I have been saving old out of date fruit teas and the normal bags!This is the method I used for both types. First I brewed the tea in hot water and let it steep for about 15 minutes. I also added 2 tablespoons of salt to the brew to help the colour fix. I kept the water to the minimum to try to make a strong colour.
Then i stuffed my piece of fabric (about 50cm square) into a clean jar.
Then I poured the Tea over the fabric. I put the tea packet on top so I could remember which tea for which colour! I will be writting this up as part of my technical notebook.
This is the end result. It is hard to tell the colour as it is quite subtle but i got a lovely shade of pink from the cranberry and a purply almost the same as the packet from the Blackcurrant and ginseng. The smell was delightful when I was ironing it!
This is the normal tea (Tetleys I think!) Again in real life the colour is much stronger. I am very pleased about this an now have a nice little stock of fabric to make a padfolio for a friend. Let me know if you try something like this as a result of this quick tutorial!

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