Dyeing

I found out something new about dyeing today.

I'm a marching band mom, and one of my duties is to help with constructing sets. We've been building desert tents this weekend for this year's show (Scheherazade) and need some red fabric. So far all our fabric has been donated, which is WONDERFUL!!! But it's all in the form of odd swatches of fabric and sheets. Some of those fabric pieces have been great, and we've been given more than 30 white sheets. But we don't have any good red fabric.

DYE! Right?

Not so right.

Rit dyes, in my experience, are horrible smelling, hard to use, and generally not as vibrant or as color fast as I'd like them to be.

A young friend of mine suggested using Kool-aid. We've all had Koo-aid stains on the carpet that won't come out, right?

As it turns out, Kool-aid dye is only effective on animal fibers--not cotton.

So I started doing some research and found this article:

How to Dye Clothing Very Bright

So I'm going to try it. It looks like it would be exceptionally cool for tie-dye, and we may have to try that sometime soon. Imagine! No rinsing and rinsing and rinsing and rinsing and rinsing! Just dye it and hang it to dry! Sounds good to me!

At any rate, I'll let you know how it goes! And maybe you'll see us acrylic-paint-tie-dyeing on a future JSWA entry.