Friday, March 15, 2013

Craft Fail: Ombre Curtians

So you may have deduced from some of my recent posts that I am having a baby in about a week and a half.  It's very exciting, and I think that the combination of  it being spring break, my being too large to do anything efficiently, and the reality that she is almost here is making me start to nest. Or maybe it's because people keep telling me I'll have no time once she arrives.

Anyway,  I was cleaning out the room that is to be her nursery and realized that my purple and grey color scheme is really just grey at this point. I decided a quick fix to that (other then actually hanging the mobile or putting art on the walls) would be to dye the curtains. They were a lovely white, but came with the house so who cares.

After a quick Facebook poll my friends said go for it, and M's cousin mentioned doing it ombre just in case it messed up. I WAS TOTALLY THINKING THE SAME THING! I had read a tutorial on ombre dying fabric on APW before my wedding and thought, OK it seemed easy.

Then I found a tutorial on pinterest:
diy ombre curtains 

Which didn't lead to a tutorial. Maybe I should have gone back to the APW post and re-read it, but when I have an idea I really can't be expected to read things. M and my bro happened to be going out to get supplies for a backyard project, so I tagged along, got my dye and skimmed the directions. I had dyed fabric before (10 years ago) so I was pretty confident in my abilities.

The first issue was that apparently I was doing the whole thing backwards: Putting in a little at a time rather then taking out a little at a time. When I was rinsing the totally not ombre fabric out I also sorta remembered the bottle saying I needed to add vinegar to the dye so it would stick to certain fabrics. hummmmmm.... Did I have one of those fabrics? Who knew, I didn't read the label.


 Luckily I didn't ruin the fabric totally, and they are just pink rather then purple. I think they work just fine, even though it wasn't what I was going for. In person you can see that the stripes of texture are actually more purple, and it still helps the room look more girly. 

What craft have you failed on?
The Artsy Girl



3 comments:

  1. Thanks a million for submitting this post to CraftFail! Your curtains will be featured there on 3/20/13 - when the post goes live, you can find it here: http://wp.me/p1sEcb-1jS

    Thanks again, and good luck with that sweet new baby!

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  2. You proably had mostly polyester fabric on those curtains. You simply can not tip dye polyester at home. A little bit of cotton in the fibres took the color.

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