The Ancient Art of Tea Dyeing

Every morning before I wash my tea cup out at work, I look at the tea stains on the bottom and sides and wonder what the numerous cups of tea I have during the day are doing to my internal organs.  Dying them a nice shade of light brown, I suspect.  I'm not too worried though as I come from a long line of tea drinkers who all lived to ripe old ages.  And they liked cups of tea with a side of cholesterol so my future looks OK.

This week I decided to combine my love for tea with my love of doilies through the ancient art of tea dyeing. I experimented with ivory and white paper doilies, and also threw in some paper gift tags to see what would happen.

Tea dyeing involves tea bags, water and copious amounts of paper towels.  You take some tea bags and place them in a large container.  I used six teabags in a non-stick roasting pan.  I filled it with about one litre of boiling water.  In one batch, I stewed the teabags for about 5 minutes and took them out before putting the doilies in.  In the other batch, I left the teabags in.  Don't be afraid to layer the doilies in the pan - I put in 15.  Also tap the doilies lightly to remove any air bubbles caught underneath otherwise you will end up with tiny white circles on the finished product.

Leave the doilies to soak for 2-3 hours, and then carefully remove them with tongs.  I say carefully as the edges of the doilies are quite delicate and can tear.  Put the wet doilies on paper towel to dry.  In a Perth summer the doilies take about an hour to dry.  However, the gift tags need to dry overnight.

Now to the end result.  The batch with the teabags left in were darker and patchy in colour.  On some, the edge marks of the tea bags were visible, which adds an interesting effect, especially on the gift tags.  The batch without the teabags left in were lighter and more evenly coloured so if you are a perfectionist, this is the method for you.  Also, the darker the original product, the darker the result so the ivory doilies and the manila gift tags were significantly darker than their white counterparts.

Once dry, iron the doilies and gift tags on a high setting.  The gift tags refused to play nicely and were still curling up at the edges so I put them under some heavy books overnight to flatten out.  

Tea dyeing gives a nice vintage effect, and doilies dyed in this way complement vintagey styles of gift wrap.  I really like the doily flowers (a how to is covered in my 25 November 2012 post) as they add height and texture.