Friday, February 10, 2012

Go big or go home... Rit Dyed Sheets

I have a big bottle of Black and a couple packages of Pearl Gray Rit Dye for awhile now. I have scoured blogs for folks who have used it, looked on the Rit Dye website for tips and tricks, and stared at this bottle longing for the courage to just do it! I didn't want to start small, I mean, why dip your toe in when you can just dive right in and get the possible initial shock out of the way, right?!

We used to have a king size bed, but it took up too much room in our bedroom so we downsized to a queen. We have some king sized sheets left over that I have some plans for but they were a taupe color and I wanted them to be gray. To match everything else in our room.


My husband is so supportive! He helped me and stuck around the whole time, saying, "You are crazy, you really do some crazy things and I like that." haha! Thanks, babe! We decided that dying them in the washing machine ran the risk of our other clothing getting stained and we were not so interested in that. We decided to do the bucket method using a huger Rubbermaid container that held some of my bags out in the garage. We followed the tips and tricks on the website referencing the bucket method and here is documentation of our shenanigans:

Here is the color of the sheets before they were dyed:



Here they are sopping wet in our "bucket"


Here David is measuring out the water with a left over bottle that he had from some washer fluid.


I seriously worked up a little sweat churning and stirring these sheets in the dye bath for half an hour!


We rinsed them with the garden hose...


Here is Mr. P all wrapped up in our new gray sheet!!


This photo really gives the best portrayal of the color.


All in all, I'd use Rit again, it was super duper exciting and I kinda felt like a teenager out past her curfew. This large amount of fabric was a little challenging, but I adore the color. The gray is even on the sheets for the most part, on the fitted sheet there are a couple patches where the color is a bit darker, I'm not too sure what happened, maybe I didn't stir the dye up well enough in the beginning?? I don't really think this will affect the over all project though. I am one happy camper and I'm ready to get onto the next phase of this little project. Stay tuned.

Have you ever dyed anything fun with Rit?


Inspiration for the dayDo something big, especially if it scares you. The reward or the lesson will be greater than you ever imagined! xo

Lauren D.

16 comments:

  1. Thanks so much for sharing this on Fabulous Friday. I've been trying to get up my courage to dye some jeans. Your sheets turned out so pretty, that I am {sweetly} inspired to give it a try!

    Warmly, Michelle

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  2. Are the sheets dyed pearl grey then or is the black?

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    1. Hey Bridget, I used the pearl gray and a little bit of black because I didn't quite have enough of the pearl gray. The color looks great for the final project, but if I did it all over again, I'd do just the pearl gray. Also, I did not lighten the original sheets, so I'm not too sure how that affected the color, but I am excited to experiment more! Hope you have success with your Rit dying adventures!

      :)
      Lauren D.

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  3. How much of the Rit Dye did you use? I am about to attempt to dye the same size sheets...thought you might be my easy button. Hoping my husband will be as enthusiastic as yours was(:
    Melissa

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  4. ok- so I have a few questions (maybe I should check if you are in fb and post there too?). I am in love with the pintuck duvet thing...but I have a king mattress and am not a sew-er so have no idea how I would go about making a duvet if the king sheet will be "shrinking" when I sew it. Also- Target has one in white...do you think I could dye it the color I wanted (which is gray btw)? Thoughts? suggestions? help? :) Thanks!!!

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    1. Hey There! I think you'd be fine with two King sheets. Do you have a sewing machine or one you can borrow for this project? You could do it by hand, but it would take forever. I don't know about you, but I just don't have the patience for that lol!

      I would not dye the white one from Target because the pin tucks are already in it, and the dye will do funky things in those areas and it'll look more tie-dyed.

      Now that I have had this on my bed for awhile and washed it a bit, My advice is to make your sheets darker than you want them initially because the dye will continue to fade for the first few washings. my gray is a little lighter and is more of a greige now than straight up gray, but it's holding together very nicely and we are still in love with it!

      BTW: Here I am on Facebook:
      https://www.facebook.com/pages/Be-Sweetly-Inspired/287395564607742

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  5. Hi there. I really want to do this for my queen size bed but wondering if the king flat sheets leave you with too much room for the duvet cover? Is your duvet swimming in the cover or does it fit perfectly? Would you recommend king sheets to make the queen or queen sheets to make the queen? I know you said you used king sheets...just want to be sure before I start. Thank you!

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  6. Meghann, I actually used one queen sized flat sheet and the top that was pin tucked was a king sheet, so I based my size really on the queen sized sheet for the duvet cover. You're right, two king sheets would have to be cut down a bit to actually fit the queen sized duvet. I had to cut off quite a bit of the king sheet I used around the edges in order to make it fit, but I already had it and didn't want to buy another. If I were to purchase two flat sheets, I'd likely purchase 2 queen sheets. Hope this helps, good luck, I'd love to see photos when you're finished!

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  7. Thank you so much for getting back with me on this. I am so excited to make these! Have a great weekend.--Meghann

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  8. I like your all duvet covers. Its really a very tough task for women to wash them and to cover them if the duvet is super king size.
    I really hats off for your job!!!

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  9. I dyed white sheets with black dye but they came out purple. What can I do to make them black?

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  10. how to dye red sheets into black and also how to dye white sheets into black

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  11. Where did you dump the colored water from the bin? After rinsing the sheet with a garden hose, what did you do next? What are the steps between rinsing and having it be dry and color-fast to put on your bed?

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