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Wednesday, July 25, 2012

dye it yourself.

Before you throw out that old tank top, or old  t-shirt with stain on it, I recommend to give it one last chance to redeem itself. 
 
*warning* if you do try this, it's probably going to become addictive. You will see the transformation and want to dye everything in your path!


STEP 1: Follow the directions on your box of dye so that you get your desired outcome, I did the stove top option which requires heating the water, and adding in the dye, and you can always add some salt to your mix if you would like a darker, richer color.

STEP 2: wet the fabric completely and then place into dye bath. stir around frequently to have the fabric dyed consistently all over.

STEP 3: remove fabric from dye bath using gloves, and rinse well under water first under warm water, and then slowly move to cold.  

STEP 4:  Wash your fabric in the washing machine on cold with only other items dyed the same color!
*I washed those items alone the 2 next times and then washed them normally with like colors. 



 This was just a plain white tank that had lost its luster, it had a few stains and was just worn looking.
 This Georgia shirt was originally this light blue color, but in college I had dripped photo developer down the front of it, so it was looking pretty terrible.  I wasn't sure how this would dye, already being blue, but it worked great and the threads stayed blue- giving it has a neat look!

 And for the sad part of this experience.  As part of having this blog- I always want to document when some of these projects fail.  Because they do.  The mistake I made with these pretty vintage pillowcases is probably not a common one, but it happened, so I'll share!
 
 Make sure you know what color dye you have (sounds simple right?) I had an old box of lots of different dyes, and the package inside the box did NOT say the color on it. It was with all of the other purple dyes, had purple writing and so I assumed it was purple.  These vintage pillow cases were the first to take the plunge and low and behold... I had green pillowcases....
Not really what I was going for.. but are still kind of neat.

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