I’ll cross that stitch when I come to it

Laridian asked (quite a while ago) something about my dyed fabrics, so I decided to write a tutorial. Here it is!

You need….

• Rit dye (powder or liquid), usually found in the laundry section of the grocery store
• stock pot (it can’t be used for food afterwards, so I have a cheapie dedicated one)
• stirring implement (I use a cheap wooden spoon)
• disposable gloves (helpful to not dye your hands!)
• fabric (of course )

Fill the stockpot with enough water to cover the fabric. Add a few pinches of salt.
Bring the water to a simmer.

Add the dye to water. The box says to use the whole thing for a pound of fabric, but I usually just guesstimate. I pour in enough until the water reaches the color I want the fabric to be.

Rinse the fabric in lukewarm water to remove any stiffeners or other chemicals.

Add the fabric to the pot. I usually crumple it before I add it so that the fabric has an overdyed look.

Stir for a while, until the fabric reaches the desired color. For the deep purple, it took about 5 minutes.

Carefully remove the fabric…..

….and rinse it in lukewarm water to get rid of the excess dye.

Now you can either hang it up to dry, or iron it dry on an old towel (a good way to find out if you rinsed out all the excess dye!). And, ta-da!, your own dyed fabric!

If you’d want to do multiple colors on one piece of fabric, fill some containers up with hot (but not boiling) water, and add a color to each. Lay out the wet fabric on a large cookie sheet or plastic container lid, and then use a paint brush / spray bottle / sponge to paint the fabric.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007 at 3:41 pm and is filed under xstitch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.