Stitching Tea and Roots

 

Stitched roots on tea-dyed paper

The title of these two pieces says it all: "The feeling I think you're supposed to get when drinking tea...but I don't." 

For some reason, for decades people seem to assume that I love tea. As a result, whenever a gift-giving occasion comes along I usually end up with at least one gift pack of specialty teas and have even scored a teapot or two along the way. The tea always goes into a large brown shopping bag labeled "tea" that is stored in the dark recesses of my walk-in art closet. I have herbal teas, smoky English teas, gift packs of tea from Taiwan, and curative teas.  In one of those 2 a.m. idle moments the thought occurred that it might be interesting to see if they could be used as dyes. 

Experimenting with tea dyeing

After kicking off a round of experimental dyeing using strips of paper towels and an endless variety of teas, I turned to the other key ingredient in this project: bamboo and wild grass roots. (See Roots Project for earlier experiments with roots.)

Bamboo and native grass roots

A first step was separating and organizing the roots in preparation for stitching.

Organized roots!

Close-up of roots

Thence ensued a blissful interlude of stitching. The results are below and perfectly capture the original theme — that elusive, zen-like feeling I uneasily suspect you are supposed to experience while drinking tea.

Panel One (11" x 11")

Panel One detail

Panel One detail

Panel Two (11" x 11")

Panel Two detail

Panel Two detail

As a beverage, the point of tea continues to elude me. As a dye, however, it holds enough possibilities that my battered old bag of teas will remain in the art closet. And in future, when gifted with yet another gift pack of teas, my enthusiasm may be marginally less false.