Dying your fabric with tea is a quick and easy way to breathe in new life into your old clothes. The tea dying process is quite inexpensive, and it results in a light, colourwash effect, unlike the heavier, opaque voverage of commercial dyes.

Here are the instructions for tea dying clothes:

• Boil water and add a couple of tea bags to a large container. The number of tea bags you add will determine how dark or light the finished fabric will be. To start off, use about 8-10 tea bags to get a light tea dye stain and fill the container with enough water to fully submerge your item.
• Go for a container you don’t mind staining, and one that is lighter, rather than darker in colour, so you can see how dark your tea solution is.
• Tea staining works best on natural fabrics so pick out an old pure cotton or wool shirt to test.
• Saturate the fabric with clear water and then put it into the tea dye mixture.
• Stir the swatch regularly to keep it moving.
• Remove the fabric from the tea dye mixture when you have achieved the desired depth of colour.
• Rinse the fabric until the water is clear.

Here are some tea dye facts to remember:

• The colour and stain you get will depend on the type of tea and the number of tea bags you use. Ordinary tea bags give a range of brown shades, while herbal teas will anythng from red to deep purple.
• Tea dyes are not easy to get out.
• Tea staining works best on natural fabrics like wool, pure cotton, silk and linen.

Have you tea dyed before? If yes, what shade did you achieve?