Thursday, March 15, 2012

The almost green rug...

So with keeping with my Week of Green I **died** two rugs...



OK this didn't go quite as planned....I bought these two very white bathroom rugs, with a slight pink stripe down the middle, on clearance at a local Home Goods store for $8 each (this is a deal if you've ever priced these foam mats)



My idea was to take these two rugs and paint/die them...sounds easy right? I washed them first, (pink stripe still there) and after letting them dry, which took forever, I go to work hand painting the leaf detail on them. I used a watered down version of the dye for the leaf painting and then went back in with full strength die to give some low lights.



After 4 hours of sitting on the driveway I get my daughter Tina to come out and help me. We have a good time talking and joking around about how unlikely this was going to work but we kept going. (These rugs are planned to go into her bathroom.)



I let them dry for 2 days. I was really hoping that if I gave it a lot of time that the die would stay. These rugs are made of polyester and it says right on the RIT die container not to use on polyester.....
BUT hey they are talking to me, cause I have this GREAT idea...



Today was dieing day. I got my supplies out and put my gloves on. Reading the directions you need to wet the fabric before placing each rug in the die bath. I lightly mist each rug with water and instantly the die is going everywhere. This doesn't look good for my 5+ hours of hand painting...I put both rugs in the bath for about an hour each. I left them in the sun, full of the die water, once again hoping that if it sits, it will take the die better.



I brought them in and put them into the washer and laundered them following the directions on the bottle....



And here are my slightly green/blue rugs in my daughters bathroom.



This was not what I had in mind but they still look better then they did with the pink stripe. What did I learn? Well I learned if it says something on the bottle, they probably know what they are talking about. LOL Oh well. Live and learn. I hope you enjoyed and learned from my mistake. Thanks for stopping by today.

Hugs~~
Molly

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