Tea Dying

We decided we wanted an American flag in our home. We're patriotic and we thought it would be a fun way to decorate and an awesome thing to create a theme around one day. Okay, so we started with Amazon. We liked the aged looking flags but did not like how dark the discoloring was on most of them. So, Zach started looking at the tea dying process and after i mentioned the previous tenents huge barely touched tea stash, we decided to give it a try. By the way the "made in America" non-stained flag was about $25 and the made abroad stained flags were closer to $45. So our project total in the end was $25.We were feeling pretty thrifty.

Step 1: Make a huge pot of tea. We did about 10 cups of water and 12+ tea bags.
(For darker color do more tea bags.) 

Step 2: Rinse flag and pour tea into a container big enough to soak the flag in. We used our garbage can in the bath tub. Make sure you use something that you don't mind staining. 

Step 3: Submerge flag in tea. Let it sit anywhere from 30 minutes to 8 hrs overnight. We let our flag set in the (not so concentrated) tea for 3 hours. We didn't want a dark stain but just enough to dull the white and give the flag a softer look.  Again for darker do more tea bags and let it sit for longer.

Step 4: Rinse flag and hang to dry

Step 5: Hang and enjoy.
We noticed that the stain did not permeate the embroidered stars hardly at all. You can see the difference in the stripes and the stars below. If you are working with mixed fabrics and materials be prepared for mismatched color. Luckily we were totally fine with it and love how the flag turned out. 

Happy crafting!