Leprechauns would be jealous.

I've had a couple of random clothing items around for a while. Two old shirts with unknown but unremoveable stains. A very silly panel skirt, based generally on the Wheel of the Year pattern in Anticraft, but made in black and white print fabrics with a "P" theme for a party. None were wearable as-is, and each time laundry day rolls around I'm reminded that that I needed to try dying them to another color someday.

Today was that day.

I'll get better at this documentation thing, I'm sure. Since I realized once the shirts were in the Color Remover bath that I really should have taken a before picture. Ah well - blog and learn.

The t-shirt on the left was originally a more olive green, the remover seems to have taken out the blue. The linen shirt on the right was a very pale sage. I should have taken it out of the color remover wash earlier - it somehow turned the most amazing blue for a while.

I used powdered Rit Dye, one package of golden yellow and one package of royal blue, adding salt and detergent as directed, since everything was cotton or linen. Yes, I could have just bought green. This was more fun.

Plonked the wet shirts into the bath first, and got way too much amusement out of watching the linen shirt disappear beneath the green water, slowly changing color as it went. I used the Official Sacrificial Spoon™ to stir the shirts in the bucket for, oh, probably 10 minutes and then transferred them to a bucket of warm clear water.


Since there was so much dye remaining, the skirt needed to be green. I was originally thinking it should be purple or red, and maybe in the future it'll go a darker blue-green with another over-dye.

Rinsing in the sink, everyone seemed a happy green, nice and even.

After a couple of times through the washing machine on a normal cycle I've got 3 new items of clothing.

The linen shirt - a nice medium green with no mysterious pink spots. I think this was the most successful of the group.

The green t-shirt pretty much restored to it's original color, though a bit darker. The only problem is that there are some flecks of undissolved dye in places and that the armpits of the shirt dyed bluer than the rest of the shirt. May need to dye something darker.

The skirt is black and green rather than black and white, you can see a little bit of it in the bottom corner of the t-shirt picture. Again, will probably need an over-dye of dark blue.

While those were in the washer, Little Rogue and I reevaluated her formerly white leotard.
It had gotten inadvertently pink, and then made white again, but had a blue stain on the sleeve that just would not come out. I'd cleaned up from the green dye at this point, so I needed to make another batch of something. Luckily, she thought blue was good.

A quick batch of royal blue, and off we went. Little Rogue did a great job of stirring and decided when it was just the right pretty blue. I was expecting this to be a disaster of pink girl turning into a member of Blue Man Group, but she even remembered to hold the Official Sacrificial Spoon™ by the undyed part of the handle.

I got some specks of blue on my white shirt, but hey, that's what bleach is for.



All in all, quite the successful first dying attempt, and I think there needs to be much more of this type of thing this summer.








Though I think we may need another Spoon™....