Tea Staining?

Tea shouldnt stain a doll. People have tried tea/coffee dying their dolls directly, with little to no result. It just washed off.

 

You can achieve nice darker splotches with ground coffee. Just boil water, add a few spoonfuls of coffe (make it strong). Dip or submerge the cloth and either leave it in there or take it out and let dry. You can iron it first and then wash, but I am not sure it will make a big difference. I have colored lace, paper and fabrics with coffee.

Hat with light coffee stain.


Paper with coffee brushed on, dried and ironed. Dark spots from the ground coffee.

 

Tea stains much darker/stronger than coffee (black tea compared to black coffee). Tea/coffee staining works great, and shouldn't stain your doll, but it does add acid to the fabric which will cause the fibers will break down quicker over time. Same with paper dyed with tea or coffee, it's no longer acid-free/archival. You can use an acid-free herbal tea (like peppermint) but they kind of leave a funky yellowish color rather than a nice light brown tone :/

 

Does sealant from blushing make it more likely to stain the doll if the clothes are distressed with tea or coffee?
Are shellac-based inks like india ink or walnut ink a bad idea? They dry waterproof.

 

The idea about tea and coffee staining cotton is that it works as both a dye and a mordant, because of the acids. This makes the color permanent and as safe as any other well dyed fabric.
So as long as the stained garment is properly washed so that no tea or coffee remains in the fabric, it is perfectly safe to use for dolls clothes.
Shellac is a wax-like natural resin. When used as a binder in ink, it simply helps suspend the pigments and "stick" them to the surface you paint. It will not make the pigments permanently bind to a cotton fiber. Even if it may permanently stain fabric, it's very hard to predict how well it has penetrated and being waterproof makes it much harder to wash out the surplus. It sounds like a bad idea to me.
Some things used to make inks, such as walnut shells, can be used for dying fabrics as well, but again, you need a mordant and the process is different.

A much better idea, if you don't want to use coffee or tea, is to use diluted fabric dye. Find one appropriate for the fiber you want to use and read up on the process. This will give you a permanently dyed fabric, where the pigments are forever in there (unless broken down using bleach or similar)
Diluted fabric paints can also be used, although the need to be heat sealed into the fabric to be completely safe from staining. This does not technically dye the fabric you just kind of coat the fibers, but since it is made for the purpose, it tends to stay on well enough.

I use coffee and tea staining all the time and have never had any problems with it discoloring the dolls or anything else.
These apron ribbons are a white cotton ribbon that has been coffee stained to blend in better with the apron fabric.


This dress is made from a white crinkled cotton and tea dyed.

Note that even though it's subtle, the coffee leans yellow, while the tea leans pink.

 

@Lillith Thanks a lot, your posts are always helpful! I assume a better idea than shellac inks would be fountain pen ink as it's not made of pigment suspended in a medium but works more like a dye in order not to clog the pen. That's why getting India ink off your fingers is trivial but fountain pen inks will dye your skin. But I'll stick to tea/coffee instead of experimenting.

 

@lutke I'm happy to help!
With the caveat that I don't have a good idea of what fountain pen ink is made of, spontaneously, I'd say that anything that stains skin will be more likely to work on protein based fibers, such as wool and silk, than on cellulose based fibers such as cotton, linen and viscose, but take this for what it's worth.