Dyeing to Make It Old

I had some great fabric I had bought last year that worked for our master bathroom but wasn’t quite the right tone. It needed to be a little more vintage-ish like the other things in the room (kind of a hodge-podge of vintage, beachy, and honeymoon souvenirs). Since I live overseas, heading to a place like JoAnn’s to get something different isn’t an easy option. I had a successful attempt with tea dyeing in the past and decided to give it another shot.

I brewed some tea using some loose black tea that was getting old. I had used regular tea bags when I did it in the States. I cut just the fabric I needed for the curtain and let it sit in the tea all day. I made sure to stir the tea initially and every so often to not get pockets of darker staining on the fabric.

I learned that you have to dry the fabric without washing it first to not lose most of the stain. Second time’s a charm! Here are the before-stain and after-stain fabrics:

I am pleased with how the fabric turned out for the curtain considering the limitations for that window (and the limitations of living outside of America). I could not put a bigger curtain there because our windows open in, and we open them often in the summer. Portuguese folks tile their whole bathrooms so my husband wasn’t keen on more holes in the tile. Thank goodness for a little wood piece atop the window to attach a rod to!

I’ve linked up with the following “parties”: