Tea Dyeing Low Volume Blenders

I have a quilt (Ol’ Blue) my grandmother gave me for my wedding, that has been well-loved. It is a gorgeous quilt with applique flowers among appliqued Celtic knots. It needs a few repairs, but I’ve never really done hand-applique before, so I need to learn.

To do that I’ve decided to try Carolyn Friedlander’s Bow Quilt Pattern. I love rainbows, and I have a stash of Liberty fat eighths that I thought would be great for the rainbows.

For the block backgrounds I had enough low volume blenders, but the common color was a cooler gray, and I wanted something slightly warmer, so I decided to try dying them with tea.

I used regular lipton family-sized black tea bags. Filled a large pot with water, brought it to a boil, added the tea bags and stirred a bit, then turned off the heat and added the fabric squares.

On the first soak, I used 8 of the large tea bags, and soaked for a couple of hours. But after rinsing, I decided I wanted something a little darker, and put them through another cycle with fresh hot water and more tea bags. My feeling by the end of it was that it would be hard to get it too dark, so if you try it, don’t be afraid to go big from the get go and use more bags.

Here are the backgrounds laid out with the bows prepped on top.

The next step is to baste the bows down, then I’ll be off to hand-applique. I’ll let you know how it goes.