Dyeing with tea

I've been meaning to share some of my natural dye experiments for a while... Starting with tea! Black tea (Latin name Camellia sinensis) produces colours from the palest beige through to grey, brown and almost black. Different varieties of tea produce different colours too! It's a fantastic way to recycle tea after a nice cuppa.



{Tea top row: cellulose fibres - viscose jersey, cotton muslin, cotton plain weave}
{Bottom row l-r: Silk pongee, wool fibres, cellulose fibres}


The basics
First drink lots of tea! Save the leaves or tea bags (I freeze mine in a ziplock bag) until you have enough. You'll need about the same weight of tea as fibre.

Always use rubber gloves for dyeing, and never use utensils afterwards for food.

Boil up the tea in water for about an hour. Use a stainless steel or enamel pan that's only used for dyeing.
Meanwhile wash your fibre to remove any dressings/grease. I use a special detergent called synthrapol but you can also use washing up liquid. For wool and other protein fibre handwash gently. For cotton and other cellulose fabric you can use a washing machine (fibre/yarn is probably best handwashed too). Leave your fibre wet.

Remove the tea bags/leaves from the dye bath (either strain it or fish out the bags).
If you're using wool any big change in temperature can make it felt, so either cool the dyebath down, or slowly wash the wool in warmer and warmer water.

Immerse your fibre in the dyebath and very slowly bring the lot to a boil (or a gentle simmer for silk). Stir regularly and gently until it's been boiling for around an hour, then turn off the heat and let it soak until cooled (keep stirring though).
Wash your fibre with detergent until the water runs clear, then dry out of direct sunlight.

You can re-use your dyebath a good few times, each time the colour will be lighter.


{Tea + Iron L-R: Silk pongee, wool fibres, wool fibres, cellulose fibres}


Mordants
Tea is a substantive dye so it doesn't need a mordant to help the colour hold fast. Different mordants will change the colour though. Alum mordant is great for wool and silk . For cotton etc. I've tried combinations of alum and tannin with soda ash. These are all done before the fibre is dyed.

You can also add iron to the dyebath for the last 15 minutes. Iron darkens (saddens) the colours, yay!

I've chosen these mordants as they're the safest to use; but always wear rubber gloves, and a mask when handling powders.




More experiments...
Rust dyeing can be combined with tea dye. These cotton plain weave samples were rusted with iron wire for a week, then overdyed with tea.




For more information and natural dye supplies...

Websites:

naturaldyes.org
aurora silk
earthues
dharma trading
fibrecrafts

Books:
(I've only included books which I own and have read.)

Natural dyes - Linda Rudkin (ISBN 978-0-7136-7955-7)
A great book which covers lots of aspects of natural dyeing, with plenty of sample pictures too! If I could only have one book on natural dyes this would be it.

The dyer's companion - Dagmar Klos (ISBN 1-931499-51-9)
A fantastic basic textbook covering natural and synthetic dyes.

A dyer's manual - Jill Goodwin (ISBN 0-9544401-0-2)
Doesn't have many sample colour pictures, but includes a long list of plants, the parts used, and the colours they may yield.

The craft of natural dyeing - Jenny Dean (ISBN 085532744-8)
A lovely book with good pictures. Not a must-have though, but a nice addition.

A dyer's garden - Rita Buchanan (ISBN 1-883010-07-1)
Useful if you're planning to grow your own dye plants, including which ones not to grow!

Dye plants and dyeing - John and Margaret Cannon (ISBN 1-871569-74-5)
Beautifully illustrated with botanical drawings. Great background reading for the biology of plant dyes.

Natural dyes, fast or fugitive - Gill Dalby (ISBN 0-9525274-0-5)
A scientific look at light and wash fastness of natural dyes, with recipes and information on how to test your dyed fibres at home.

Rust and Clay dyeing - Kimberly Baxter Packwood
A lovely book for those wishing to experiment with rust, and from a great Etsy seller too!

Printing with dye

I haven't screen-printed anything for many years, but I've been itching to have another go. I decided to use procion dye as ink as I have lots of it, in every colour imaginable! I also like the way it sinks into the fabric leaving the handle unchanged, merging with the colour already there rather than sitting on top.
Obviously this won't work on dark fabrics... for that you can use a discharge paste (to bleach the colour out).

I'm not able to make photo stencils yet, so the cheap and cheerful method is to use a cut paper stencil. I chose greaseproof paper (baking parchment) as it's easy to see a drawing through and doesn't disintegrate easily when wet. I also wanted to see whether fine details could be achieved.

Next up was preparing the printing mixture... I won't give specific amounts because I can't remember them! The thickener usually comes with instructions anyway. I used manutex to thicken water until it was gloopy. The dye concentrate was made up separately, and consisted of dye powder, soda ash, and enough water to make it liquid (there may have been salt too). Finally I mixed about a cup of manutex with a tablespoon or two of the dye, and added some calgon (to stop the mix being gummy and clogging up the screen). You can also use urea to stop the mix drying too fast (and clogging up the screen).

Now to print! I ran off lots of samples on different fabrics to see what would happen. On plain weave white cotton it printed perfectly, yay!

On un-scoured cotton calico the dye wasn't absorbed evenly, giving a distressed look, which I love! Sometimes it pays not to wash fabric first. :D I over-dyed it with tea afterwards.




On thick cotton pinstripe the dye didn't penetrate fully, so the print looks faded (which I also love!) To print 'properly' on thick fabric I could have used a thinner printing mixture.




The print worked well on sheer cotton muslin too. The muslin was dyed first with walnut husks.



To set the dyes they needed to be steamed for 50 minutes, with the fabric rolled up in brown paper. I used an electric food steamer which worked pretty well (don't use it for food again afterwards though!)
Then a huge amount of rinsing and washing with synthrapol (fairy liquid does the trick too), a quick boil and they're cooked!

I've left some printed samples in a bucket of rusty things, hopefully they'll be ready in a week...

Fibrecrafts is a great website for print and dye supplies. They're UK based but ship worldwide.

Finally there's a great book I've been using to swot up on screen printing methods.
Screen printing: the complete water-based system by Robert Adam and Carol Robertson (ISBN 0-500-284253)
It doesn't cover print on textiles at all but if you're printing on paper etc. it's invaluable, for textiles it's still very useful. The methods of making up a screen are the same, and it has lots of juicy info on photo stencils. This book covers everything from the simplest paper stencil print, to setting up a professional printing studio.