Can I dye something permanently with coffee or tea?

I am only able to buy clothes online.  I bought something that only came in white.

That is one of the colors that I hate.

Will coffee or teas permanently dye something?

I hate to ruin something that I just bought for a lot of money.

Anne Miller wrote:I am only able to buy clothes online.  I bought something that only came in white.

That is one of the colors that I hate.

Will coffee or teas permanently dye something?

I hate to ruin something that I just bought for a lot of money.

I would love the answer to this as well.

I suspect the materials will matter.

What is it made out of?  (say cotton, say cotton, say cotton lol)

I would imagine it would work out pretty well with natural fibers!

Make a soup pot load of tea/coffee and boil it down a bit. You are making a dye so the color is important. Use a good amount of tea/coffee. Once it cools down a bit to handle

Add 1 part white distilled vinegar to 4 parts dye water to open the fibers up and soak it for an hour. Don't crowd the fabric, it might not come out an even stain if you do.

I've done this with a test bit of cloth, not a shirt and have had good results.

Edit - This link explains it better but same process I used. https://woodlarkblog.com/natural-dyeing-with-tea/

Will it add colour - absolutely.  The colour will last for several washes.

But here we get nitpicky

Coffee and tea stains the cloth.  To dye the cloth, we need a mineral to act as a go-between.  Think of it as false teeth to help the colour bite into the cloth.  This is usually called a mordent (thus the teeth metaphor).  

If this is cotton or linen, tannin acts as a partial mordant.  Tea and coffee have loads of tannen so this is a good step.  However, if we want the colour to last well in the light and wash, adding a mineral like alum (available for cheap in the garden supply shop but is also available as a food additive (think pickles) or from a dye supplier) will help.  

The worry for me is the temperature.  We usually boil cloth to dye it but some clothing is held together with synthetic thread that doesn't do well in those conditions.  I wonder is solar dyeing is an option where you are?  

we did a lot of this in college using tea and coffee, it lasted a few washes. the clothes will never be white-white again, but the color will fade. worked well for drama club sort of applications.

if you have herb teas with hibiscus, you may get beyond just the beige tint.

I dye a lot of my clothes, and I use the stuff in the fabric store, because that is what I have access to here (occasionally I'll do something weird with herbs, but most of the time what i want is black or navy blue).
The composition of the fabrics and threads can have some unexpected effects at times (I had certain panels of a bra come out purple while the rest came out black, for example-- the t shirt in the link Timothy posted is another good example). It can be weird to have the whole thing be dark blue and then the (synthetic) thread screaming white, for example, but on the whole it almost always works out okay.
If I were you I'd try the coffee or tea. You can always dye again darker, so when it washes out, you could try again darker or with something else.

When we lived in MN we died cotton curtains with tea.  Our objective was to get a color that was closer to beige and not the WHITE the curtains we had were.  It worked, but we were not very fussy about the outcome.

Bumping this thread up because I want to experiment dyeing with used coffee grounds and record the results.

My old pot-carrier, which was basically just a pre-folded tea-towel with a hanging loop that I used to carry hot pans from the stove to the haybox, turned out to be made from partly synthetic fibres and melted. So I used one of the old towels which came in a giant stash of linens that someone was giving away to make a new one. Only it's white. Bright, in-your-face sort of white. So I've started collecting used coffee grounds, to be dried and then stored in the lidded plastic jug that for some reason also showed up with all the linens, until I have enough to experiment with. I shall record the results.



I think the first experiment will be with just coffee grounds, no mordant or anything, to see how it works. Then I can make a better decision on what to change for future experiments turning some of the rest of the stash of linens into less-white useful items.

Watch this space!

See R Ransom's post above:- definitely need a mordant - alum recommended.
A much younger me was told by an older textile person, that "during the war, scanties were dyed using tea or coffee, but needed refreshing from time to time".  
Giving the article room to move in the dyebath helps with a consistent finish, or go with a deliberately fashioned tie-dye look.  Washing the garment before dyeing to remove any treatments can  help, and then post dyeing, use a non 'whitening' detergent, something gentle that is meant for wool perhaps. The fewer additive, the better.

Jill Dyer wrote:definitely need a mordant - alum recommended.
A much younger me was told by an older textile person, that "during the war, scanties were dyed using tea or coffee, but needed refreshing from time to time".  

I'm uncomfortable with alum - it seems an unnecessary purchase and contaminant in the garden when the grey-water goes out there. I also don't think I'll learn enough if I go straight for mordants. First attempt will be just coffee. I'll take photos and keep notes. Then when it fades enough so that I want to do it again, I might have collected enough tea-bags or oak galls to give me enough tannin to try again using a tannin mordant.

The pot-holder I made used half of one of the old white towels that showed up in the free stash of linens, so I'll keep the other half for colour-comparison purposes. The thing will be hanging in the kitchen not exposed to direct sunlight, and realistically it's not going to be washed very often unless I accidentally drop it in the pot I'm supposed to be carrying.

post dyeing, use a non 'whitening' detergent, something gentle that is meant for wool perhaps. The fewer additive, the better.

Noted. My detergent is a fully biodegradable, gentle, minimalist sort of detergent. I'm a tightwad but I do buy the best, locally made detergent I can as it all ends up in the garden. There's nothing like a grey-water system that waters your food supply to make you conscious about what you put in the water!

Meanwhile, young Índigo has taken over coffee-grounds collecting duties, using the slightly-cracked lidded plastic jug that for some reason also showed up with the free linen stash.



I think it will about another week at this rate before we have enough for the first experiment...