Well, I had quite an eventful day when I decided to tye dye my new snow-white bedding. I bought the bedding specifically to tye dye it blue and yellow as I have been unable to find bedding with only those colours in it. This is the first time that I have tye-dyed something and even though it took us several hours to complete everything, it was quite a lot of fun.

I decided to take photos as we went along and let you how I went about it in case it helps you in some way (and just to brag too). I would recommend it to anyone, really, it was a lot of fun, especially because my daughter helped me and we had some mother and daughter time.

So here goes…

Firstly, I got my tools together, namely;

1. My metal tub bucket
2. A braai/barbecue grid big enough to fit over the top of the bucket when open
3. Enough syringes for each colour of the dye
4. The tye-dye (I used Tingecor – Guarany)
5. Elastics
6. Gloves (something we forgot)

Step 1:

We pulled the material into peaks all across the bedspread. Once we’d made a peak we tied it with an elastic and then about 7 or 8 cm from the top I tied another elastic. Once we had done the whole bedspread, we could move onto the next step.

Step 2:

I mixed the dye as per the instructions on the bottle into 3 of my kitchen pots (oh yes I did take that chance and yes, I am crazy). I didn’t mix the third colour as they say it has to be boiling hot when you put it onto the fabric. (The photo below already has all 3 colours in a pot)

Step 3:

Storm (my lovely daughter) did the yellow colour on the top piece of the peak and I put the turquoise colour on the middle piece of the peak. We used syringes to get the colour onto the fabric and once all of the peaks were done, I could mix the last dark blue colour and we could move to the next step.

Step 4:

Both Storm and I did the dark blue on the fabric and we added this blue to all the open white spaces. Don’t stress if you happen to drip a drop or two on the other colours, it’s not a disaster.

Step 5:

We had to heat the colour up on the stove so that we could do the pillow cases. I also added 3 unbleached linen shopping bags to the mix as we had too much colour left. Once it was boiling, we removed it and did the pillowcases as well after putting the elastics onto that too.

Step 6:

What we did next was take out our hairdryers and added a little heat to our creation. I then put it in the washing machine with the elastics still on it and washed it as if I was doing a load of washing, with the washing powder and fabric softener (this was a mistake, so please do not do that part).

When we removed it from the washing machine and started removing the elastics, we felt like little children opening a present and we couldn’t wait to see what it was going to look like.  We were pleasantly surprised and quite happy with the outcome. This is what the bedding looked like when it was on the washing line busy drying:

Due to us forgetting to put gloves on…or should I say that we didn’t even think about it, we ended up dying our fingertips as well and it has been extremely difficult getting it off. Thought I’d share what that looked like too just so you can laugh at our silliness.

Once we had placed the bedding on the bed, Storm and I were feeling quite proud of our accomplishment

A few things that I learnt for next time:

1. Wear gloves! Seriously, this one is important. It took me days to get it out from under my nails.
2. When you wash the bedding, do not wash it with washing powder and fabric softener.
3. Do not mix the whole bottle of dye powder. Halve it if you are doing a bedspread and halve the water.
4. Set the colour first before washing it. You can follow these instructions to set it:

You will need a bucket or a large bowl. Fill it halfway with distilled white vinegar. Add 1/2 cup of salt and stir until dissolved. Place newly dyed garment(s) in a bucket and fill the rest with cold water until the shirt is submerged. Let soak for 15-30 minutes. For further colour setting add another 1/2 cup of salt & 1 cup of white vinegar to the normal wash laundry load. Keeps the colours brighter and lasting longer!

I hope this helps you a little and if you have any comments or suggestions, please feel free to comment on the post, I would love to hear from you.

Enjoy the moments