One Hundred Dollars a Month

About 9 years ago I picked up 2 comforter sets from Pottery Barn for a screaming bargain. One for our bedroom and one for The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird.

Fast forward to 9 years later and my daughter is no longer into the whole lime green and white color scheme anymore so I decided to try and dye it using Rit Liquid Dye rather than trying to sell it at our next garage sale for $20 bucks. I wasn’t totally convinced it was going to work but I took the plunge …. and I’m so glad I did.

For this experiment I used 6 bottles of Rit Liquid Dye and settled on Denim Blue Dye.   There was 1 queen sized comforter and 2 shams {the comforter weighed 7 pounds and the shams 1.5 pounds each}.  Rit does not recommend dying more than 8 pounds at a time, so I split it them all up.   I was nervous about if this was going to work or not, so I dyed 1 sham with 1 bottle of dye first and it worked brilliantly so I continued dyeing the rest of the pieces.  It was a total up-cycle.

To dye the set, first I washed the quilt and 2 shams thoroughly and let them dry.

Like I said, I started with one sham.  I followed the directions to a T, since I’d never done it before.  I started by wetting the sham in hot water and then put it in the machine, carefully laying it in there so that the fabric wasn’t wrinkled as best I could.  I set the water to hot and picked a cycle I knew would last longer than 30 minutes {if you don’t have that option, you’ll want to stay close by reset the wash cycle a couple of times}.

Before pouring the dye, I shook the bottle to mix it well.  Then, I carefully poured the dye into the detergent dispenser.  The dye can potentially stain plastic parts of your washer, so RIT recommends flushing the dispenser with 4 cups of HOT water after adding the dye {I didn’t have any problems though}.

After about 10 minutes, I added a mixture of 1 cup dissolved salt and 4 cups HOT water into the dispenser.  That was the directions for dyeing cotton–if you are dying silk or nylon, you want to use vinegar instead of salt.  Again, I flushed the dispenser with another 4 cups of hot water.

{Before going into the dryer}

Then, I just let the washing machine do all of the work.  After the cycle was over, I repeated the process for the other sham.  Then, I tackled the comforter, using the exact same method, only with the comforter, I used 4 bottles of Rit.

{All dry!}

When it was all said and done, I tossed everything into the dryer and worked on cleaning the washing machine by running 2 cups of bleach through the hottest cycle possible with a couple of old towels in the machine {just like the bottle suggested}.  It worked great and my washing machine looks none the worse for wear.

The comforter set looks brand new!  And, the whole thing cost me under $25.  Now, I am combing my house looking for other items to dye.  It might become a problem. 🙂

Have you ever dyed anything with Rit Dye before?

Mavis wants to know!