I'm dyeing...

You will love the possibilities with this week's diy post.  Fabric Dye!  A few years ago, I did a lot of tea dyeing but then I sort of forgot about it.  Well, I'm back on the kick of dyeing things.

I love to bargain shop.  I found some jersey sheets on sale for $15 but they were not my color.  I figured I could learn to love it.  I didn't.  A few months later, I found a coverlet which I loved but again, not keen on the color.  It too was bargain priced at $20 for the Queen size cover and two shams.   I figured I would learn to love the yellow color.

The sheets and coverlet look awful together so I decided to change the color of them.  I started by bleaching the sheets.  Now, keep in mind that bleaching and dyeing works best with natural fabrics.  Synthetics will not bleach and do not accept color well.  In the picture below, you can see that the colored thread is still blue even after bleaching.  But, it doesn't show on the outside of the fabric so I kept going with the project.

I wanted a deep coral color.  I bought two Rit dye colors because I couldn't find the color I wanted.  The Scarlet was too red.  I have studied the science of color so I was all up for mixing some colors to get to closer to what I wanted.  I mixed half scarlet and half sunshine orange. 

 I filled up my washer with hot water and dissolved the color in the tub and then added the sheets, wet.

 After 30 min of agitating, I washed them in soap and water then dried normally.  Below is the finished color.
Way better than the blue but still not as dark as I wanted.  I will be doing this again only adding a little black to get a darker tone from this.

Next was the coverlet.  The yellow was pale but had this fluorescent tint to it that was hard to blend with any other color, especially the grey-blue sheets.  I love grey.  I can never get enough grey so I really wanted to dye it grey.  That's a hard color because basically, you are watering down black.  Black is a combination of every color in equal proportions.  So...

 I messed around with some test colors.  The Rit black has a purple base.  Too cool for what I wanted so I added some yellow to neutralize the purple.  My next post, I will talk more about mixing colors. I also tested a black with red added and a black with tan added.  I tried each color out on some paper towel.

 You can see here, that all three are grey colors but one has a warm base, the other cool and the last one, very purple.  I was avoiding the purple look and wanted the top color.

 The other trick to using dye is that the water naturally turns any color to it's tint so it's hard to get, say for instance, a true black.  The same holds true for grey.  I like the grey but it could stand to be a little bit warmer so I may play around with it again.  For now, it is so much better than the weird yellow.  I love how the thread remained an ivory color.  In this case, it actually enhances the pattern.

So, what's next?  I have a pair of old converse that are faded, dirty and need a pick me up.  I am going to bleach them to white then dye them a fun, bright color for Spring!  This brings DIY to a whole new level!