This week I have been doing some yarn dyeing, also called tea-staining, in my home kitchen. My favorite yarn for knitting socks is Elann yarn company’s Esprit. Using tea and salt, I over-dyed two balls in their French Navy colourway to give it more variation and subtlety.
You can use this recipe on cotton yarn or fabric and achieve a tea stain that will be moderately colourfast.
Supplies Needed:
Yarn: I used two 50g balls of cotton/elastane Elann Esprit
4 cups boiling water
8 tea bags: I used PG Tips black tea because it brews up strong
1/4 cup salt (I use non-iodized salt for dyeing, but it’s not absolutely essential that it be iodine-free)
A heat-proof container to hold the boiling water and salt
A baking sheet with a 1” lip
Aluminum foil to cover the baking sheet
An oven or other long-term, consistent heat source
Dry Yarn Prepped into Skeins and Ready to Dye
How To Tea-Dye Cotton Yarn:
Boil the water, add the tea bags, let steep until you have very dark tea, remove the tea bags and discard them.
Dissolve the salt in the tea.
Prepare the yarn for dyeing: I unwound the balls and made skeins. Like anything, you will be more likely to get more saturated color if you pre-wash the yarn to get any sizing or dye residue leftover from the manufacturing process. I did not pre-wash mine because I was over-dyeing yarn that was already dyed and not expecting a great deal of coloration from the tea (when using actual dyes and undyed yarn, I do recommend a pre-wash). If you want the tea stain on your yarn to be evenly distributed, at the very least wet your yarn with cold water (I wanted more variation, so I started with dry yarn).
Yarn Soaking in Tea and Salt Solution
4. Lay out your yarn in the baking sheet. Pour the tea and salt mixture over the yarn. Cover with the aluminum foil and let sit at room temperature for 24 hours.
Cover with Aluminum Foil and Let Sit for 24 Hours
Tea-Dyed Yarn, Ready to Hang Dry, Wash, and Repeat
5. Uncover the yarn and let it sit in the oven (or other relatively warm place) with the heat set on low and the oven door open (if you don’t want the oven to heat the room, turn it off and close it to keep the yarn warm). The application of heat is to help the fibers take up the color of the tea better, so the more slowly the yarn dries, the better. Mine was still quite damp after 4 1/2 hours. If you’re leaving the oven on, check the yarn every 45 minutes to make sure it’s not drying out—you don’t want to burn it, just keep it warm.
6. Next, let cool uncovered at room temperature. Hang to dry, then rinse thoroughly until the water runs clear. Hang to dry again, and your yarn will be ready for use.
Here are two different socks, knitted from the blue yarn as-is (below, left) and knitted from the tea-stained yarn (below, right):
Image: Sock knitted from commercially-dyed yarn (Before)
Image: Sock knitted from commercially-dyed yarn, over-dyed with tea (After)