Ghetto dying? Tea staining?

[PHArchivist]

I have a shirt I'm going to use for my 1:1 Indiana Jones. In person it's cream; in photos it washes out to white.

I want to darken it a bit, but don't feel like bothering with the full blown, Ritz dye methods.

I've heard of running coffee grounds in a wash load to darken blacks. Plus there's tea staining, but I'm not sure with a full shirt...

ideas? Thoughts?

 

[Ramiel]

I did it with my Jack Sparrow shirt, I used thinned coffee (I'm in Italy, we have a pretty "strong" coffee here...), I just soaked the shirt in water, squeezed out the water in excess, and I "sprayed" the coffe over the "distressing areas" with a brush... It turned out quite well...
If you want to evenly dye it, you could wet the shirt and then soak it in coffee or tea, let it dry, and iron it to "fix" the color (but it's not a permanent dye, if you wash it you can lose the effect...)

 

[PHArchivist]

Ha! I did just that with hte web belt for Indy! Soaked in coffee, got a great uniform color, dried it in the dryer, then washed it. Should NOT have washed it cause all the coffee washed out!

 

[DaddyfromNaboo]

I did it with my Jack Sparrow shirt, I used thinned coffee (I'm in Italy, we have a pretty "strong" coffee here...)...

Hence the veeery small cups lol:lol

Why not try a strongly diluted acrylic if you have that lying around ? All natural dyeing colours will wash out unless they are fixated somehow. except maybe for henna colours that are used to do those east indian madonna hand paintings or colouring hair.
Then again you could go the full blown dyeing method

Michael

 

[Ramiel]

Hence the veeery small cups lol:lol

Yep
in fact, in our cups you will find the same amount of coffee you have in your BIIIG cups... But with less caffeine (don't ask me why, I've read it in a scientific magazine...:lol)

 

[El Duderino]

If you have an airbrush you can used watered down brown paint and do a light coating on the shirt. Coffee works just as well though. Just don't try dipping it in dirty muddy water, I learned first hand it doesn't work.

 

[PHArchivist]

Would different types of tea result in different colors?

 

[Darth Mule]

I'm sure they will. It's something you just have to sit down and experiment with. Get an old white sheet or some scrap white fabric and cut it into little swatches so you can try a different dye technique on each one.

I reccomend the RIT method myself. The problem with tea and coffee dying is that it washes out. If you're dyeing a shirt, it is likely something you will want to launder every now and then, so color fastness is an issue unless you want to redye it every time you wash it. There are many recipes online for RIT teadyeing. Again, you'll have to experiment.

If you do use RIT, you may notice on your swatches that you get some speckles of red when using brown dyes. This is because the red grains are the hardest to disslove. To remedy this, I made a strainer by hotgluing a piece of poly organza/chiffon (sheer fabric) to a disposable tupperware bowl with the bottom cut out. After mixing my dyes in a seperate cup, I pour it through the strainer into the dye bath.

 

[Darth Lars]

Tea should be wash-proof. Real, black tea leaves, that is. Not green tea, rooibos or "herbal tea". Use an excess amount of tea-bags for the amount of water. Pour boiling water over the bags, wait a couple of minutes. Soak the garment in clean water first so that it is wet before you start dyeing.
Note that tea also contains acids, which will break down the fibers somewhat, so you shouldn't use it on sensitive fabrics. There are lots of web pages out there on tea dyeing, go search!

 

[d_jedi1]

I can't comment on washing it, but I used some coffee to dye fabric for a 1/6th obi-wan kenobi that I made pants for.
I boiled water with the ground coffee in it and added the fabric... once it had boiled for a while I took out the fabric, let it dry, cleaned off the grounds, and made the pants.
The color looks good but like I said, I have NO idea what would happen if I washed them.