Tea Dyed Gift Wrapping

Nov 20, 2018

Want to take your tea obsession one step further this holiday season? I’m wrapping all my gifts this year in custom made, tea dyed fabrics! This wrapping is great for books, puzzles, clothes and more. You can also custom create your own gift – tea-dye shirts, socks, napkins, placemats…. the possibilities are endless.

I toodled over to Joann’s Fabrics and found some bleached and unbleached muslin fabric. I did a test run yesterday of 4 teas/herbs and the results for 3 of them were better than I imagined.

I found some great information on how-to for dying fabrics at DIY Natural and at WikiHow. First I ground all the teas & herbs I was using into smaller pieces (list below); then I measured 2 tsp of the ground teas into a tea bag filter. I put 2 cups of boiling water and 1 tsp of salt into a pint mason jar then put in the teabag. I let the top of the t-sac filter hang over the edge of the jar and secured it in with the jar’s lid. I steeped the teas for 1 hour then removed the teabag.

While the tea was steeping I took my fabric and cut it into my desired sizes. Next I twisted the fabric and secured rubber bands in different areas to make a spiral pattern. When the tea was sufficiently steeped, I rinsed the fabric with cold water, wrung it out and placed it in the jar. I let the fabric sit in the tea solution overnight. In the morning I rinsed out the fabric, then placed it in a pot of cold water (that had a dash of white vinegar in it). I let it sit for 10 minutes (to stabilize the color), then rinsed it out, removed the rubber bands and dried the fabric completely.