Shirt Tutorial

Tutorial by Mojo from brethrencourt.net

If you have a shirt, chances are you want to age it through a process called "weathering." Weathering. simulates the natural aging of clothing, but usually it is more exaggerated than natural aging since it has to be seen by an audience or show up on camera. You might ask, "Why not distress the shirt with actual dirt and a more natural method of aging?" The answer is that natural aging does not show as well at a distance as artificial distressing, and it is harder to do with any success. Plus, it takes a lot longer...

Weathering your shirt by tea-dying:

1. Pre-wash your fabric. Or, test the tea-staining process with one new and one prewashed square. Soak in tea and time the results.

2. Add hot water to a very large soup pot. If doing a large quantity of fabric then use the hot water setting on the washing machine.

3. Add 3-5 teabags to the pot or 5-10 in the washer. Steep a few minutes.

4. Add fabric to the tea. Immerse fully and stir to get all areas of the fabric soaked.

5. Check the fabric color every 10 minutes or so.

6. For a faint tea stained look, soak the fabric for as little as 20 minutes.

7. For a deep tea stained look, soak the fabric for as long as 4 hours or overnight.

8. Drain tea out of kettle or washer, then refill to rinse fabric. Rinse well several times.

9. (Clean washer by setting it to go through an entire cycle with only a little soap and bleach.)

10. Hang tea-stained fabric on a line to dry or put it into clothes dryer on a low setting.

Tips:

• Experiment on sample pieces of fabric.

• Watch the process carefully so fabrics don't get too dark.

• Rinse fabric well before hanging to dry.

• Various tea blends may offer a variety of subtle colors.

• Don't let the tea bath get so cold it makes a skim layer. A skim layer makes "bad" stains eg unpredictable & random and they're really hard to get out.

• You can also use the bulk loose leaf tea you find and the Indian/ Punjabi specialty store.
• There are also theater quality dirt paints that will give you a dingy look: try Dirty Brown.

 

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