Curtain Project Finished

Dying fabric was much easier than I thought it would be. Whoohoo! I originally bought these curtains about six years ago. They were white with yellow ties. In the last house, DH dyed them yellow for me. (What can I say, he is a Renaissance man.) It was a very bright lemon curd kind of yellow. We had very bright sunlight out there and they were all blotchy and faded when we brought them here. Plus the yellow just did not work in the room. I happen to love red. Plus, as I have shared before, we keep kind of a Scandanavian look in the room and the red just works better.

The dying process was not hard, I used the color remover first, which was somewhat of a misnomer. The curtains still looked to yellow for me. Then I did the red dye. All of this was in the washing machine. I was sweating bullets that the agitator in the washing machine was going to be bright red forever...

The color on the box was more of a blue red. These came out more of a yellow red. I suppose this is due to the yellow shade that they were. But it is no where near orange at all. I followed all of the steps and I am pleased to say that it worked. The instructions said to immediately run the wash cycle afterwards to clean the washing machine. I did not have chlorine bleach on hand like it said to use, so I threw in about 4 scoops of Oxyclean. It looks like brand new.

I did not use my ribbon as I trim like I thought I would orignally. The ribbon I bought is more of a blue tone, so it will not really match. So I will have to find some big buttons or something to break up all of that red. What is really interesting is that the white thread that they used for all of the edging and seams did not dye red. It is totally white. It must be made of nylon or something. But it totally looks like I bought the curtains like they are, brand new.

I recycled today. I am happy. I really like these curtains. (Love the way I can tie them up or leave them down.) Plus I have found that curtains are really expensive. So I saved money. With the color remover and the dye, it came to a grand total of $6.87. I feel like one of those design shows on HGTV. LOL