#tea dye

March 14, 2024

Soy milk is an easy way to to create prints on fiber when using natural dyes that are tannin-rich. The protein of soy milk is an organic binder that invites stronger colors that last longer, so you can use soy milk to 'paint' one-of-a-kind patterns and whimsical designs on textile. This video tutorial will show you how to make prints with soy milk and dye with black tea on cotton fiber.

CHAPTERS

0:00 Introduction - Soy milk prints

1:10 Soy milk as a binder

2:42 Kitchen dyes

3:23 Supplies

5:32 Fiber prep

6:32 Printing pad

9:14 Soy milk printing

11:42 Tea dye

13:10 Dyeing printed fiber

14:03 Results

15:19 Wrap up

15:49 Sneak peek of next tutorial

16:29 Blooper

SUPPLY LIST

Textile - cotton shown in video

Soy milk

Tea - black leaf shown in video

Measuring cup

Measuring spoon

Pot with lid

Tongs

Bowl

Mark-making tools - sponge, brush, stencil, etc.

Printing pad

Pins, tacks or painter's tape

Sometimes you have a perfect fabric, garment, or trim, but it's that stark, bright white that just isn't going to work.

Sometimes you have a white garment with just a couple of little stains that won't come out, and you need to hide them.

You'll find some people who will recommend putting 20+ tea bags in a pan of water, and boiling the garment in the super-concentrated tea until it is a light brown.

Don't do that.

Use real dye.

The short version of what I'm about to say is that tea-"dye" is going to be staining your fabric, and dye will bind pigment to the fibers in your fabric.

"But tea has been used for centuries to dye fabric!" Yes, and if you use a mordant, your tea will dye your fabric really well! However I've seen mordanting mentioned in exactly 0% of lolita tea-dye tutorials.

A mordant is a substance that you treat your fabric with, which allows the dye colors to chemically bond to the fabric. In small-batch home dyeing, this usually involved boiling the fabric with alum powder for a couple of hours before dyeing.

Without the mordanting, the tannin (the pigment of the tea) won't actually bind onto the fibers. You can see that the tannin isn't binding to the fibers because the "dye" bath of tea is a very dark brown, and the fabric becomes a very light brown. If those pigment molecules were able to actually stick to the fibers of the fabric, the fabric would be much closer in color to the dye bath.

Mordanting is a process that's kind of dangerous, time consuming, and rather stinky. The main draw that tea-"dye"ing has to most people is that it's simple and doesn't require any really special chemicals.

So, it'd be really useful if there was a way to get pigment to bond to the fibers without needing a mordant, something where you could just throw it in some water, add your fabric, and it bonds to the fabric without a lot of extra work or steps.

oh hey! Dye! RIT dye is a direct dye, so it binds to the fibers without mordanting. RIT is actually two dyes in each bottle. One is an acid dye that dyes protein fibers (silk, wool, nylon) and one is a direct dye that will dye cellulose (linen, hemp, cotton, rayon). This is why RIT instructions tell you to add an acid (vinegar) when you're dyeing protein fibers, to activate the acid dye. This is also why, when dyeing with most dyes, the dye water will go almost clear when the fabric is fully saturated with dye, but RIT never will. The dye bath will lighten and be exhausted when all the pigment in the dye moves into the fiber. Since RIT is two dyes in one and only one is used at once, half of the dye never binds with the fabric and will remain in the water.

RIT is nowhere near the best dye out there. It's not the kind of product you want when the dyeing is the art. It's not great for tie-dye, silk painting, or something where it's incredibly important to get a pure, saturated color that will never fade. On the other hand it's also cheap, easy, available everywhere, and generally pretty safe as long as you are using your common sense.

Why does it matter, if tea "dye" will get your fabric to the color that you want?

Well, to determine if something has successfully been dyed, there's three things to take into consideration.

First, there's the question of if the pigments that are in the dye make the fabric the color that you want. Tea "dye" can do that.

The second is to have that color stay in the fabric.

The third is to not have that color leave the fabric and transplant onto another surface.

The bad news is that tea dye is just a stain, like a tea stain from a spilled cup you might be drinking, and every clothing dye we have is made to remove those. As you wash your garment, it will change color.

The second bad news is that there's nothing stopping the pigment on your fabric from binding onto something you don't want it to bind onto. You can have your nice tea-dyed lace bleed brown onto the fabric it's sewn onto, or your tea-dyed blouse sweating brown spots onto your JSK.

We also need to address the "the dose is in the poison" concept really fast. A cup of tea, or even three or four cups of tea, are safe to drink for most people. This does not inherently mean that it's safe to boil fifteen cups of tea leaves for two hours and then soak your bare hands in it. I'm not saying that it's not safe. I'm saying it's not responsible to assume that it's safe just because a low-dose version of it is safe. This has been a PSA. If you like medical stuff, there's a whole youtube channel dedicated to people accidentally poisoning themselves by eating too many bananas, cookies, licorice, gummy vitamins, etc. Very cool channel. But yes, wear gloves! Use tongs! Don't inhale your dye fumes!

And yeah, RIT also isn't something you want to drink. Use your common sense.

Apart from "one of these dyes things and one just puts your other clothes at risk", here's a few more considerations.

1) Light colors of RIT, like ivory and pale tan, don't need to be constantly boiled to get them to bond to natural fibers. I use hot tap water from the hose off my water heater and then add in a full kettle of boiling water so that I have about 3 gallons of water, and that's enough for small dye jobs like 1.5 yards of fabric, a shirt, or 20ish yards of trim. This cuts down on burn risk but also means I don't need to dye in the same kitchen I eat in. It can all happen in a bucket in my laundry room. Because the bath isn't boiling, I don't need to worry as much about inhaling steam from a boiling dye vat. I'm still going to avoid doing that, but the risk is greatly lessened.

2) I used less than one capful of dye in my 3 gallons of water to dye 12 yards of cotton lace. Since my dye wasn't concentrated, little spills cleaned up really easily.

3) I didn't have to brew the tea, and I don't have to filter and throw out five pounds of wet tea leaves.

4) I have the color I wanted, it only took 25 minutes, and I know it's going to stay the color I want.

FINAL SAFETY NOTE: Dose makes the poison, one more time: if you regularly expose yourself to something that's kind of hazardous (dye, paint markers, Mr Super Clear), you need to take 10x the precautions that the average occasional user takes. You can safely use RIT with just gloves and good ventilation if you are already healthy and you only dye one thing a year. But if you're working with people who are dyeing things every week, you're going to see us go full apron and face-shield when we're working with it, because something that's totally fine to do one time isn't equally fine to do fifteen times every month.

MYNTH by Lynn

Hypnos Part 1: Illusion 

mynthshop.etsy.com

LGBTQ new business owner trying to pay off student debt. :’)

dying fabric with tea & coffee.

Apr. 29, 2024 My birthday is coming up and for the first time in a long time I'm not feeling anxious about getting older. There are things I'd change about my life, I guess, but age is not one of them.

February 18, 2024 I was unable to work on this book for two days due to horrible, agonizing back pain. I couldn't sit in a chair or do much of anything. I'm feeling much better now, thankfully. Yesterday we even went out to the craft store & bookstore & got some fun new goodies!