Saturday, April 2, 2011

Dying Fabric

Hello again!
IMG_3325

Not too long ago I needed a pink t-shirt for work. It was going to be customized with one of those ink-jet printer iron on transfers. I knew I would only wear it a few times. I decided that I really only wanted to spend $4 on this shirt. Walmart had several possibilities, but most were too nice to ruin with an iron-on. Others were in the $8 price range, which is still cheap, I know. Still, I had it in my head that I could spend $4. Have you ever gotten stubborn cheap? Well, I was. So I decided to buy a white man's t-shirt for $4 and dye it. Since I was buying for my colleagues too I ended up dying three of them.

Here is the t-shirt. The back shows all twelve teachers at our school who got pink-slipped this year.
Pink T- Shirts
I can't comment on darker colors, but I was impressed with how easy it was to get even consistent color with this Rit "Petal Pink". Out of respect for the other tenants who use our laundry room, I did the boil on the stove top method.  It was super easy. I wet the shirts in my tub and soaked them in hot water for a while.Next, I boiled them with the dye for about five minutes each. Then I rinsed them out in the tub and put them in the dryer to set the color.

As long as I had this big pot o'dye on the stove, I decided to try an idea from my Martha Encyclopedia of Crafts. I dyed some printed fabric. In this case I used some bits of vintage sheets.
Before and After Vintage Sheet Dyed Pink
Vintage Sheet Dyed Pink
I like this one the best.
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All in all, dying with Rit on the stove top was affordable, easy and fun. I already have plans to dye a shirt that I recently stained. I'll update after using the darker colors.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hmm, I think I need to try Rit dye. I used some other one that Joann's carried and it didn't work well at all. Colors are still fading and bleeding after 10-15 washes. I love the vintage sheets you have though.

littlemissmk said...

i've wanted to try this a few times but never have- thanks for the review! ;)

Meghan McCann said...

Oooh, like tye-dye, but for grown ups :)

LOVE IT!

Meghan
megmacdesigns.blogspot.com

Suzy D. said...

Jane,
When my daughter was 4 she had a pre-scool project with glue and pink colored tissue paper. Well that project went in to her back pack with her beautiful light yellow sweat shirt.Needless to say the shirt was no longr light yellow when she got home! Off to Wal-mart I went to get light pink rit dye.The outcome was a wonderful peach sweat shirt. Saved by Rit dye.

Anonymous said...

Great post! I want to see a follow up to this topic

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