Baking and Basting Fabric

Enquiring Minds want to know.....how I make my "basted and baked" fabric. So while I was having my coffee this morning and waiting for my kids 2 hour school delay, I decided to bake and baste some fabric. This all took about 3 hours. So without further ado....I'll get to how I do my fabrics.

I like to use MCG Textiles 28 ct. evenweave. (I do not like their linen! but I find their evenweave is superior - especially when you are stitching 1 over 1 on it - it's weave is nice and you don't "lose" your thread no matter how you cross your X) So I go to their website and purchase 30 x 36 inch cuts for little money (cheaper than what you can buy it at Michael's or Hobby Lobby - even with the shipping!).

First brew some "really strong" coffee and some "really strong" concentrated tea (little water and a big bunch of tea bags - I use 4 cups of water and 1 gallon tea bag):

I use a big stock pot and throw my fabric in (now sort of have it "wadded" up because that is what gives you the mottling if you want a mottled look) Here I'm doing a 25 ct piece of Zweigart Lugana - but I also have 5 other cuts of 28 ct. MCG evenweave that I did today too:

Pour in your tea after it is heavily steeped:

Pour in your coffee. Now a word of why I use both tea and coffee, I find that using tea alone, give the fabric an all over reddish type tint...not bad at all - but I like the deep browns that coffee also gives the fabric. I find the best (for my personal taste) is to use both coffee and tea - you have a basis of red and browns and it makes it excellent, really antique looking.

While your fabric is staining in the pot turn on your oven to 250 degrees (I live in the USA - so this means Farhenhiet - NOT Celcius). Depending on the depth (darkness) of color you want - that's how long you leave the fabric in the pot. Remember to pull the fabric out - rewad and resink in the pot so that you have different mottles all over the fabric and different depths of color throughout.

Once you reach the desired darkness, get out a cookie sheet, cover with tinfoil to protect your sheet, flop your fabric on it making sure to "wad", fold it, layer it on the sheet so that the baking process will give it a more mottled look.

But the whole shebang in the oven, wait for 15 minutes - pull it out and rearrange the fabric and put back in for another 15 minutes. Continue pulling out and rearranging the fabric until you reach the aged look your looking for - you can "baste" the fabric occassionally by lightly dribbling the stock pot "juice" over the fabric on the sheet:

Once that is accomplished, you take your fabric and iron it with a very hot iron to "set" the tea/coffee, bake and basted fabric. You don't have to iron until dry...just iron a minute, then hang to dry.

When you get finished - like I did today you come up with a range of colors and antique water stained looking fabric. Play around! Have fun....get aggressive! A wide range of beautiful fabrics can be yours like these below that I did today! (click the pictures to see the mottled look and the colors)

Pretty aren't they....this range of colors was all achieved with the same stock pot of coffee and tea - the only difference was "soaking" time and bake/basting time.

(EDITED TO ADD - due to many angry e-mails): This is my tutorial...I posted it for people interested in it. This is my technique and I developed it myself for my own fabric. Try it at your own risk! I get lovely fabric each and every time I do this. However I am not liable for destroyed or burned results! I believe that would be the fault of baker not the writer.