My 5ep tea dying experiment. (AKA 99 green tea bags + LDB)

[Souper]

Alright, so I recently purchased some 45rpm jomons and will soon be retiring the jeans I've worn every day for the past 4-5 months. Or rather, making them my backup pair.

I decided that I'd do something fun for the first wash: Hotwash them in green tea!

Process:
-First I boiled 99 tea bags(I decided to drink the last one) in the largest stockpot in my house for 30 minutes with ~2 cups of kosher salt. This produced a deep booger green/pea soup color. Or NYC puddle water. Whichever you think is more appealing
-After straining, I submerged them in a large basin filled with the green tea with a weight to keep the jeans submerged. I did not further dillute the mixture. Inside out; I wanted the color to take to the wefts more. The tea was still boiling. I wanted to get every last bit of shrinkage out
- I napped for 4 hours recovering from the workday that started at 5 am for me.
- I abraded the jeans in the basin a bit, doing a crude handwash. I focused on the knees and lap. I wanted whatever indigo that's been rubbed off to fall off into the green tea bath. I love contrast.
-I removed the jeans and immediately tossed them into the dryer. Because I am very anal about my whiskers and whatnot, line drying them would have annihilated my creases. Tumble drying contributes to fading because the fibers frizz up and thus lose more indigo afterwards. This is a plus for me.

Results:

Conclusions:
Photo 4 is closest to true color; but dark because the jeans are still damp. Photo 4 is meant to show the tea's effect on the inside pocket bags. All of the weft threads are a similar color. The picture's don't really do them justice; there is a yellowcast on the abraded areas and the normal 5ep greencast on areas that aren't abraded. I have not really changed the contrast in any of the pictures except in one of them for cosmetic purposes. The buttons are starting to get tarnished, perhaps because of the tea. Definitely cool. all in all, very complex looking jeans now. They are shown next to my girlfriends RRLs for color comparison, and also because she took the pictures and wanted to be included.

I realize the subtlety of the outcome may be lost in the pictures, but in real life they definitely look different than normal 5eps. Most of the change will be lost if I ever wash them in a machine; I think every future wash will be done with at least 40 bags of tea. Overall I am happy with the outcome

Now who wants to try soy sauce dying? Or maybe some sort of fruit dye next...

Opinions?

 

[evilgeniusdan]

Great concept

Slightly unrelated: nice roping.

 

[ken]

Your girl has cool jeans.

 

[montecristo#4]

Originally Posted by Souper

Now who wants to try soy sauce dying? Or maybe some sort of fruit dye next?

Sake.

 

[cloudhands69]

I have wanted to do persimmon dying ever since I saw a dyed jean jacket on here (or sufu). I haven't found super unripe ones though, and that's what you need for the dye job.

 

[Arethusa]

I've done this as well (though I used several ounces of loose green tea). Similar results, and while it's interesting, I was really hoping for a more pronounced effect. The next time I do it, I'm using $5 of really, really dark roasted coffee and a bucket.

One note: they are permanently stained. Normal machine washing will fade the effect a bit, but the gold cast is going to stay (at least as much as it's present, in any case).

 

[whodini]

Originally Posted by Arethusa

I've done this as well (though I used several ounces of loose green tea). Similar results, and while it's interesting, I was really hoping for a more pronounced effect. The next time I do it, I'm using $5 of really, really dark roasted coffee and a bucket. One note: they are permanently stained. Normal machine washing will fade the effect a bit, but the gold cast is going to stay (at least as much as it's present, in any case).
Decaf? Folders'? General Foods International Cafe Vienna?

 

[stickonatree]

nice toenail color.

 

[freelance robotics]

Originally Posted by whodini

Decaf? Folders'?

General Foods International Cafe Vienna?

100% $30/lb. peaberry kona coffee. if you're buying expensive jeans, why dye them with cheap coffee?

 

[Arethusa]

French roast from Trader Joe's. The only thing that really matters is the darkness of the roast (maybe, maybe oil and acid content and by relation freshness, but these are mildly trivial). After that, just grind it as fine as you can and boil it in a large pot for half an hour. Salt doesn't matter. These aren't dyes that need activation or fixing.

 

[Eason]

These are some cool ideas... did you tumble dry inside out, btw?

 

[whodini]

Originally Posted by freelance robotics

100% $30/lb. peaberry kona coffee. if you're buying expensive jeans, why dye them with cheap coffee?

Kona? That's the best we can do here? Really?

 

[Souper]

yea, inside out tumble.

Anyway picture 4 is a bit more yellow saturated then the jeans actually are.

It's somewhere between that picture and picture 2. There is an obvious gold-cast though.

When researching this I got the impression that coffee washes out rather easily.

 

[Double D]

I've done this a lot over the past few years... when I soaked my 501s after Reading Festival I did it with boiling water, salt and a big bundle of teabags.

Tea seems to stain a lot better than coffee, but a lot of it will wash out during a machine wash.

 

[timpoblete]

Interesting post and I can slightly see the green in pics, but that may be because you said so.

What shade of green was the tea before you soaked them? The different types of green tea out there produce different depths of green. Japanese matcha for instance produces a really nice deep green, sencha a golden green, and cheap Chinese Jasmines tend to give out a brown. Stuff you buy in Starbucks a light green. I'm thinking that matcha would've been sweet, which I assumes the stuff that Sugarcane uses when doing their green tea died jeans.