Fun with Fabric Dye

Fabric dye is some awesome stuff. You can totally transform stuff by dying it. It is always a bit of an adventure though. Will it work? Will the color come out right? Am I going to destroy the thing I'm trying to dye and/or all the things nearby? Here are the stories of my experiences with dying fabric, from best to worst.

The first and second things I ever dyed turned out the best, I believe.

First was a pair bright blue swim shorts. They were 100% nylon so I used dye specifically for synthetic fabric.

These swim shorts used to be about the color of that blue kayak before I dyed them.

The instructions call for heat.

Basically you cook the water, dye, and fabric in a pot you intend to never use for food again. I bought a large aluminum pot at the thrift store just for this purpose. I used black dye and at first the shorts looked pretty black. After dying you have to wash the fabric, sometimes several times, to get out any dye that is going to leach out. The shorts ended up a very nice navy blue. Even the plastic button took the dye. I'm not going to lie, this dying process is smelly and can be messy, but it was totally worth it. I've been using those swim shorts a couple of years now and they've held up beautifully.

The second thing I dyed was a sweater.

Our family dressed up as the Scooby Doo gang for Halloween a couple of years ago. I was Velma. I hit the thrift store to look for a big turtleneck sweater. Finding one that was orange was never going to happen, but I did find a white cotton one.

Using regular, orange fabric dye, I dyed the sweater in the washing machine. It was so easy! The color was perfect.

The next two projects are tied so far for um, second place I guess. Our new house has an HE washing machine and only fills up enough to cover whatever is inside-just barely. I don't think dying fabric in this washing machine would work well, so I haven't tried it.

The thing I wanted to dye was also very, very large (it takes two separate loads to wash). So I gave dying in the bathtub a try. I bought a slipcover for an L-shaped Ikea Ektorp couch from the as-is department.

It was brand new in the package and only $10, but it was pink.

I figured I'd try dying it before we committed to actually buying the couch. I used regular brown dye and had to dye the cushion covers separate from the frame cover- it was A LOT of fabric!

It's not really recommended to dye stuff in your bathtub because it can stain.

We had a tub already in kind of bad shape (it needs to be re-glazed or something) so I wasn't too worried. The first "batch" didn't even stain the tub.

The second did a little bit (may have had something to do with not having time to clean up as thoroughly afterward that time). The dye job worked well enough. The cover is brown, there are a few splotchy areas (it's hard to move that much fabric around freely and that leads to a bit of a tie-dye effect). The fabric close to the welts still looks a little pink if you look really closely. But overall it looks fine. The biggest problem I had was that I followed the directions on the fabric tags and used hot water when I washed it afterwards. It caused the cotton fabric to shrink a little bit. I did not put it in the dryer.

We did end up buying the couch to put the slipcover on and are pretty happy with it.

Here's a pic of the couch on Christmas morning.

My latest project was dying my pink diaper holder/changing pad black.

It is nylon, so I had to use the pot method and special dye again. The fabric is somewhat rigid and the pot was a little small for it to move around completely freely.

I did my best though to move it frequently.

I think I might have "over cooked" it a bit. The fabric got a bit crunchy wrinkled. It was very dark after dying and has gotten a bit more gray with repeated washings (dye kept coming off on my hands from it so I had to rewash a couple times) and it's a little splotchy too but not bad.

I realized later that there were little black spots all around the stove after this project. I guess some dye got carried in the steam. A magic eraser took them all off though.

My worst dye project was a dye fail. Before we moved, I tried to dye our polyester bed skirt.

It was way too big for the pot, but I tried to just do the visible edges. It didn't work. It looked tie dyed and the green fabric+brown dye turned a very ugly color. That one ended up in the trash and I bought a new bed skirt which I was prepared to do anyway.

Those have been my experiences with fabric dye. It can be risky, but it can also be awesome. In the future, I may try dying some of my stained maternity shirts to see if they can be saved. I've also seen people dye old jeans darker and people who have to wear black clothes for work dye them to keep them from looking faded. I've bought dye at Michaels and Joanns. Joanns is where I've found the nylon/polyester dye and they usually have a larger selection of dye there as well.

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Wittle Dresser

I bought a little bitty dresser for the baby's room from Ikea. I was planning to put it in the closet, but I haven't yet.

I painted it with chalkboard paint and rubbed it all over with chalk.

I spray painted the wooden knobs that came with it silver. I used skewers stuck into the ground outside to hold them up while

I sprayed them all over. They looked kind of like space mushrooms.

I think it turned out pretty well for an inexpensive little pine dresser. You can see in the last picture the wall color I mixed up from oops paint and a bunch of white paint. It's kinda vanilla-y.

House Goals for 2012

Here are some of the things I hope to accomplish in 2012. This is an overview. I'll post more detail in individual posts.

Baby room- it needs to be painted and set up before April. I've never had a nursery before, so this should be fun!

Paint MBR/Bath- even though we do have a separate room for the baby, he'll probably be sleeping in our room for the first little while. I'd like to get our room painted (and dejunked a bit) before he comes.

Finish Office- For Christmas I cleaned up the office for Bob. I got rid of several boxes we had left around and moved some longer term storage out and into the basement. I scrubbed the walls, baseboards, and floor (it was a nasty mess!) and put my cute Ikea rug down on the floor. All that is left to do is organize my craft closet, put up those shelves I bought and put some computers in there so we'll actually use it.

Set up Guest/Playroom- I did a lot of cleaning recently in this room too. We need to get a bed, a few wire shelves for the closet, and maybe a rug for this room. That and I need to make some kid friendly labels for the toy storage bins (maybe they'll clean up after themselves... in my dreams).

Organize closets- speaking of labels... I want to make some to use in organizing the two linen closets we have in this house. I spent some time organizing the one near the girls room the other day. I like how it's turning out. It just needs a few tweaks and some finishing touches. The other linen closet is in our room and it needs a bit more work.

There are some other projects I'd like to do around the house, but we'll see what we can get to before the baby comes and then what we can do with a baby again.

So they can't see me make-ed

The first time we took our girls camping, my oldest was about 4. The campground had a pool a short distance from our site and I took the girls for a swim. After we were done, we stopped in the bathroom and my daughter did not want to keep her suit on. I took it off her and wrapped her up in her towel to walk back to our tent. Once we got back to our site, but not inside the tent yet, she dropped her towel. I explained to her that it wasn't appropriate to be naked in public. Then to clarify, she asked me, "so they can't see me maked?"

One of the things that really bugged me about our house after we moved in was the window coverings (or lack thereof) in the master bath.

master bath pic from the listing

The large window is not only right above the big bath tub and right next to the totally clear glass shower, but it is also on the front of the house facing the street (one of the few front facing windows actually).

The previous owners had two bamboo shades in the window. They did not completely cover the window and they were dirty and dusty as sin. There was even some sort of wasp nest or something up at the top of the INSIDE of the window!! We finally took them down and put up a curtain rod. Instead of a curtain, I used the fabric shower curtain I bought when we were selling our old house.

The result is actually a brighter bathroom than before and best of all, no one can see me make-ed.

How I Cleaned my Blinds without sneezing

The house clean up continues. Our new house has three bedrooms we're not using as bedrooms right now. Almost every time I'd go in one of those rooms (or even in the girls' room) I'd end up sneezing. There was a lot of dust. I've been trying to clean up the dust a bit at a time. Fly Lady's duster has been quite handy. All of the bedroom window coverings were gross with thick dust. I decided to wash them in the bath tub. I haven't tried washing the roman shades in our room yet, they might be too far gone. But I washed all of the blinds from the other rooms. Some were thick plastic molded to look like wood. A couple were painted metal. I washed all the same way. Run some hot water in the bath tub, add old laundry detergent (the new machine needs HE detergent), then put the blinds in. Don't pull them up, leave them extended to make cleaning easier. All the blinds weren't too hard to get down. Although there were two different kinds, both snapped out of the hardware which stayed attached to the wall. I only washed one at a time since one fills the tub and doing it over several days avoided burn out. I let the blinds soak for a few hours then usually because it was bath time for the girls, I'd hurry and wash each slat front and back with a rag. I'm not going to lie, it takes some time and work, but it got the blinds totally clean and with no sneezing. The blinds look like new and I'm happy!

Halloween Costume/Pregnancy Announcement

Why tell people you're expecting when you can let your belly do the talking?

I drew half of a rib cage on a regular piece of paper. I cut out the pieces to use as stencils and traced them twice (the second time in reverse) with a sharpie on some white felt.

I sketched a baby skeleton on another sheet of paper. I found plenty of inspiration online.

You can buy pregnant skeleton shirts or pregnant skeleton iron ons from various websites.

I used the window as a light box to trace the design on to some white felt. I ended up cutting the baby skeleton out in one big piece and filling in the negative spaces with the black sharpie.

I was going to use liquid stitch to attach the felt to my black shirt, but I couldn't find it. I went with glue gun instead. It held up for two days of all day wearing (over a long sleeve shirt). I don't know how it would do in the wash especially since I used a regular sharpie and not one designed to withstand laundering.

5 Awesome Halloween Costume Helps

1. The Thrift Store- So many creative costume options at very affordable prices. My costume last year came mostly from the thrift store. I was Velma from Scooby Doo. I found a bulky white sweater turtle neck and dyed it orange. I found a polyester maroon skirt there too. In years past, large neon green shirt for my husband to be Mike from Monsters INC, purple shirt and pants to go under my scaly dress for a Celia costume, and red pants for my Incredibles costume all came from the thrift store!

2. Solid colored t-shirts and/or sweats- They can be the foundation for so many costumes! I bought solid red, long-sleeved shirts for my husband and I the year we went as the Incredibles. I printed out the logo on regular paper and taped it to the shirts. It looked great!

3. The remnant bin at Joann's- Around Halloween, the fabric cutting line at Joann's is crazy! But after a big weekend (big coupons, holiday, whatever) the fabric remnant bins are full of fun stuff. You might even find exactly the kind of fabric you wanted (or never knew you wanted till you saw it). And best of all, all the remnants are 50% off!

4. Felt- Available in paper sized pieces in a rainbow of colors at a multitude of stores, felt is some handy stuff. If you want something a little nicer than paper stuck to your solid color shirt, felt is incredibly easy to work with and has a nice look. You can sew it, glue it, or even tape it on. On my husband's Mike costume, I used felt to make the eye and the mouth. I taped it on because I was lazy. It held up alright through the night, but if we had wanted to get multiple wearings out of it, a more permanent adhesive would have been better

5. Group costumes- Having a group costume is fun. Sometimes it can be tricky (like when your kids start developing opinions on their Halloween costumes) but having a group theme can make it more obvious to other people what you are supposed to be. When we did Monsters INC, people who just saw our daughter (she was Boo in her pink shirt and purple pants) didn't get it. But when 'Mike' was holding her hand, it became pretty obvious.