How To Dye Fabric with Tea Bags

I found some yellow sweatshirt fleece for a great deal online.  It arrived, and the color was a lot brighter than I wanted.  A bright banana yellow.  So I figured I'd use tea bags to dye it and give it a muted tone.

I read up online, and got into it.

First I steeped a handful of black tea bags (probably around 10)  in a big pot for quite a while, over an hour.

Then I threw the soggy tea bags away.

Because I was trying to dye 2.5 yards of fleece, I didn't have a bucket or container large enough.

So I dyed my fabric in the bathtub.

I filled the tub with enough water to cover fabric, getting it all wet before it touched the tea.

I pulled out the fabric and dumped the pot of concentrated tea in.  It looked pretty gross.

My two year old asked who went poo in the tub.

I let it soak for a few hours, squishing it around when I'd pass by now and again, trying to prevent streaks of dye.  Of course you want a uniform color, and so stirring it is important, so I'd just swish it around every now and again, and it worked and I didn't have dye lines.

Once the fabric has achieved your desired color, put it in your washing machine on just the spin cycle to get all the tea water out.

Then throw it in the dryer to set the color.

Also, because my fleece was 80% cotton, 20% poly, I think that made it harder for it to accept the tea dye.  The more natural the fabric, like 100% cotton, the better it will soak up the dye apparently.

So now it's the color I want, and I'm excited to get working on this next project!