so last week i got to go to a baby shower (yes, by myself during the day while the kids were all in school…but i wasn’t going to say that because i feel like i’ve rubbed that in your face enough and i kind of still want you to like me aside from the fact that i get up to like 7 hours of “opportunity to miss my children”every day. okay no really i’m done.)

it was a dual baby shower for moms that were having girls.

as i got ready to try to find something i wanted to give these two adorable new moms to be, i remembered in my frantic and sad attempt to place in haphazardly organized piles while trying to find something i REALLY needed in my yet to be fully unpacked storage area  in my first attempt to make my storage area fully organized i came across a few packages of onesies that i had stored away for such an occasion like this.

so i got out my dye and i got out my doilies and i started to have some fun.

but first lets briefly talk about dyeing.

i’ve mainly used Rit dye in the powder form.

for some of these onesies i also dyed doilies  for these onesies and doilies i used  Teal # 4  and Petal Pink
 i’ve yet to try the fuchsia but i’m excited to…we’ll see what i can make out of that.

in the near future i would like to try the liquid form of the dye, as i’ve never tried it and for this project i felt nervous to try something without giving it a trial run before, so if you have pointers by all means leave them in the comment section!

okay so lets talk about the dye and the prep.

first things first read the box and follow the directions on the box on how to mix your dye. and which method you are going to do. i always do the bucket method as i find i can control the saturation of the color or i can do different shades (i.e. ombre)

*prewash your garment or in my case for this project: garment and doily. this will help to take out anything in the garment or in the doily that will make your dye not take as well or unevenly. also it helps so that you don’t get shrinkage after the fact.

*different saturations and hues for different fabrics.

this was very true for my doilies. i had some vintage doilies (mainly ivory) that grabbed the dye quickly and soaked in very dark.

the white joann’s doilies grabbed the dye at a much brighter “hotter” color.

and the ivory doilies i had grabbed the dye at a less bright more muted yellow-ish tone. (it made my teal more greenish teal)

take into consideration if you are trying to get a close match in color and saturation, try to keep the fabric (or doilies) the same, and keep them in for the same amount of time.

after you play around with your doilies or onesies, rinse them out let them dry, if you dont feel the shade is dark enough, redo them to see if you can get a darker shade.

after you get the desired shade, wash with detergent in the washer. this will ensure that it will not bleed onto anything later on. if you are doing an ombre onesie (we’ll talk about that next) i suggest you hand wash it first with something like Woolite
so the color doesn’t bleed into the white section before it sets.

one reader had this to suggest:

an artist friend told me to not rinse; air dry then heat set in a hot dryer with the item inside an old pillowcase, pinned closed. When you do wash, use cold water and mild detergent. It’s worked well for our projects. 

okay now lets talk about different shades or ombre:

i did a whole tutorial on how to make the ombre onesie look here. 

in that tutorial i talk about making the dye really strong by not putting as much water as is directed on the box, the look you get is a much brighter and stronger look. this time i wanted to see what would happen if i just followed the box instruction and i wanted to do more of a softer blend up the onesie, and i wanted to make sure the top would stay completely white.

both end up giving you the ombre look.

this time what i did differently was:

*dipped the onesie only about halfway up once. the dye traveled up slightly but not as much (i think because the dye wasn’t as strong)

*then i let the bottom sit in the dye for about 5 minutes.

*then i dipped the onesie 1/4 of the way down to create a middle shade

i did the same thing with this onesie in the teal color. and then i played around with the doily.

to create the ombre doily i did just like the onesie:

*i dipped halfway into the dye the doily (a wet doily)

*let the bottom of the doily sit in the dye for about 5 – 10 minutes.

*dipped about 1/4 of the way down the doily about 2 -3 times.

* las but not least after i’ve done all these steps i dipped quickly most of the doily except for the very top of the doily into the dye, and then set it aside to let it dry.

to set the color i did the same thing of letting it air dry, then hand washing in woolight  and then threw it in the dryer.

okay now, moving onto the next onesie. this one was again using the dye but this time we took strips of jersey fabric, folded them in half and then ombred them.

i briefly touched on this in the other ombre onesie tutorial. this time we did thicker flowers, and a few more of them to create a nice big flowery mess. 🙂

then after i played with the ombre and with dying the doilies, i just dyed one of the onesies a solid color and placed the non dyed white doilies on it. simple and cute.

so now that we’ve talked about how to dye your onesies and the accessories on them…next we’re going to do the step by steps on how i attached the doilies and created the flowers and attached them onto the onesies.

that will be in our PART DUEX post. 🙂

so for now, go get your dye, play around with fabric dyeing and then we’ll work on finishing up the cute factor by combining dye and adding the accessories.

ps if you have any questions or if you have insights please post them in the comment section i will interact with the questions there so if you have the same question as someone else maybe i’ve already answered it!

talk to you soon! 🙂