Crafty Cousins: dyeing

Okay, a few times I’ve made mention of a kind of dyeing project that was looking like a craft fail. Well, 2 months later, I’ve finally finished it. Smile

hee hee. I kept hitting parts that I didn’t know how to make it work. I really should have titled this post: “What happens when the crazy idea in your head doesn’t take shape.” Yep, that sums it up. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

I have these boots. They are the same color as another pair I have that I like better, so they don’t get much love. So I had the crazy idea to change the color. Once upon a time, there were spray bottles you could buy to use fabric spray paint. I know, I used them for Willy Wonka’s coat here:

I couldn’t find a purple coat, so I bought a trench coat at the thrift store and sprayed it with paint, since I couldn’t dye it (dry clean only *sigh*). Yeah, couldn’t find those spray bottles anywhere. Ask my sister in law. She was with me. Anyway, I bought some fabric paint at the craft store, but it wasn’t the color I wanted, so I tried mixing it with acrylic paint.

It was metallic paint. Not what I wanted.

But I gave it a whirl anyway.

Wanna see how the boots looked for about 1 1/2 months?

Yeah, like Michael Jackson’s cast offs. Or maybe on Sleeping Beauty when the fairies are fighting “Make it blue” “make it pink”. I got annoyed and threw them in the garage. But every time I went out there, they were mocking me.

So I bought some white fabric paint, and tried glazing over the silver to tone it down. Not so much. Sat in the garage like this for another 2 weeks. Then, I finally wised up and got some black fabric paint.

Now, what do we get when we mix black and white? That’s right, gray! The color I had been going for all along. I didn’t get a picture of the improvement, because after it dried, I went and sprayed with waterproofing boot spray to protect my paint job.

Then I wore them to church when they were finally ready.

They were a bit stiff the first time, and I noticed a few spot that needed to be touched up, but it mostly came to fulfill the crazy lady’s vision. Do you have any craft fails or non-vision conforming crafts, or am I just super OCD?
Finally, I have a confession. I LOVE St. Patrick’s Day. It’s one of my top 5 favorite holidays. Why? Probably because it’s so underappreciated. And silly. I mean, pinching someone over a color? Just plain silly, but I love it. Anyway, I haven’t decorated at all for it, because all of my decorations are in another state (but only for a few more weeks! Eek!!!) So I did just something simple yesterday with my girlies. Mind you, we are currently living at my mother’s, so it’s not like I have free reign, so I worked around her typical mantel décor (the cute little lanterns and the daisy swag) and just added some stuff for fun.

We made a rainbow for preschool yesterday (I just do a little preschool with my daughters. Nothing special, but I use this site, and it’s awesome!). So fun, and my oldest thought it was “So beautiful!” I cut out some rosettes and letters with my mom’s Cricut and her ribbons and rosettes cartridge. It was hard for me to figure out, but I’m going to blame a long day, fussy girls, and impatience on my part. I’m sure it will work better for me next time. Here’s the rosettes:

Anyway, just a little bit of fun. I have gold coins coming from Amazon today for preschool that I’ll throw in a jar up there too.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

First, I have to share this video. It just makes me so happy! I love Newsies Smile

It just goes to show that some people have too much time on their hands, but that makes the rest of us happy!

Newsies!

By the way, I’m so excited, my red dress from last week won on The CSI Project! Woohoo! I updated a picture on it too if you wanna go see!
Okay, now moving on, I’ve finally finished my project that I’m going to enter into the Sew-vivor contest

You may remember a few weeks ago when I said I was starting a project and this was your clue…

That was this twin duvet cover

That I bought at Target…Let’s just see that price tag

$7.48 on clearance. Gotta love that! I had this idea of using a twin sheet set, but I couldn’t find any that were white, cotton, and under $10. That was my budget. So I went with this Target duvet that was a cotton/poly blend, and made it work. First, I spent a bit of time unpicking the sides, while watching movies/TV in the evenings. Then, I cut one side to be the bottom of my bedspread (this is a crib/toddler size bed, that’s why I used a twin. If I were doing bigger, I’d do the next size up like a full for a twin), pressed the sides in 1/2”, and finished around the edges with a zigzag stitch.

and cut the other side into strips (mine were 7 1/2” wide so the finished strip would be around 6 1/2”) I pressed in the sides, top and bottom of all the strips 1/2”

I sewed the short sides and one long end of the strips with a regular stitch (so one long side isn’t finished). Now, I knew I’d be dyeing, so I only sewed 2 with white thread, and the rest were either pink or brown. I also made all the pillow cases I wanted so I could dye them at the same time. I don’t really have pictures of them, except the one I didn’t dye. I used the pillow sham

that came with the duvet cover and turned it into a ruffle/pleated pillow. I cut it into pieces like so

and used the idea of this pin (source unknown, I guess it’s a private blog?)

which kind of worked, but didn’t…so I did a more pleated look, like so.

The stitches in the middle are just a basting stitch because the pleats didn’t want to stay, so I basted over them, I may take them out, or I may leave them…Who knows?! Anyway, for my other pillows, I did one out of the fabric pocket thing the duvet came from (why not, it’s already a pillow shape!) and just added Velcro to help it stay closed. After it was dyed, I added big ric rac to make it fun

The other 2 pillows were just squares I made, and I used the buttons/button holes at the bottom of the duvet to be the closure behind the pillows.

Now, you wanna know my uber cheap (but a little more time consuming) trick to cheap pillows? Wal-Mart (or Target). I went and bought the standard pillow, and it’s $2.50.

I cut it in half

and sewed one end close, and that was the stuffing for my white pleated pillow. I made forms the size I wanted out of the duvet cover (which if you just wanted to stuff your pillows and not ever worry about changing them, you can do that too) and sewed the pillow forms, and my pillow cases.
Okay, now I got to the fun part…Dyeing! Go here for some of my past tips…Anyway, Rit has this great resource on their website to help you figure out the color you want. It’s their color dyeing chart. I used these 2 colors to make my pink colors.

Fuchsia and Rose Pink. The brown was a bit more tricky. I bought some dark brown dye, and dyed all my brown things, but it came out as this weird brownish-lavender-gray color. Not what I wanted. I’m sorry I didn’t get a picture, but it was bad. So I gathered my dyes

and between their color chart and my mad-scientist skills, I got a much better brown! I was shooting for dark/milk chocolate, and I think I got it. Next, I ordered my ruffle foot off eBay, and accidently sent it to an address we haven’t been at for 2 years. So I had to wait even longer for it to forward. *sigh* I finally got it, and on Saturday, I got rufflin! I used Craftaholic’s Anonymous tutorial here on using a ruffler foot, and it helped a lot! It was a bit of trial and error, but it was fun, and once I got the hang of it, I had ruffles coming out my butt! Okay, not really, that’d be weird, but look at the crazy-ness!

Sorry, getting ahead of myself. I drew the lines of where the ruffles should go on my base piece,

and then did my best to keep a straight line while using the new crazy foot!

Isn’t that brown nice? And the pink? That pink and brown paisley-type fabric is actually upholstery fabric from Home Fabrics. They give you sample cuts on Fridays, and that was one I had gotten a long time ago, and it wasn’t quite as wide as the rest of my strips, but I thought it looked good!
Okay, now, for the pillows, these are what I did. I bought a mystery box off Pick Your Plum awhile ago, and here’s the fun goodies it had:

For $30. I used the ric rac to do the pillow I showed you before, and this pillow,

I got the idea from that off U-create, which highlighted it from Flamingo Toes. The last pillow I did was using a tutorial from Sew Dang Cute for her frayed zig zag pillow.

That pink and brown fabric and some white snowflakey fabric were from Wal-Mart remnant bins. See the fabrics after dyeing:

I loved that the little snowflake design gave it a cool look! Okay, here’s my baby’s bed before this bedspread

No bedding except for her blankets. Now, I’m not quite ready for the change of the crib to a daybed toddler bed, but when I am, I’ve got this cute bedding!