How To: Dye Your Clothes

I have had this sweater for a while now, and while I still love the cut and fit of it, it wasn't long before I grew tired of the color. It didn't really go with anything else in my closet (which consists of mostly black, white, gray and blue) and I found that I was never wearing it. Still, I wasn't quite ready to part with it either, so I decided I would try my hand at dyeing.

Dyeing this sweater was actually pretty easy, but before you go decide to change the color of everything you own, its important to keep a few things in mind. First, it does matter what your item is made of, and natural fibers will dye best. My sweater is 65% ramie/45% cotton, both natural fibers. Second, a patterned item may not (read: probably won't) turn out well because of all the different shades, so its probably best to stick to solid colors. And finally, no matter the color of dye you use, you are not going to get a super bright, super true-to-hue finished product, but it will still look nice.

Rather than give you a step-by-step how to, I will just post a few pics and recommend that you simply follow the instructions on the Rit color remover and dye, as I did (I know, that makes my post title deceiving...).

I "cooked" my sweater in the color remover for the whole 30 minutes that the instructions recommended and was pretty pleased with how well it took the color out.

After it was good and white, I prepared the dye in my washer (actually my mom's, I was at her house when I did this).  I wanted my sweater to be as dark and vibrant a blue (I used Rit Royal Blue) as possible, so I bought the liquid dye instead of the powder. One liquid bottle is about equivalent of two boxes of powder, but at a better price, so it seemed like the right choice and was easy to just pour right in. If you opt for liquid dye too, remember to shake the bottle before pouring it in the washer. I forgot, even though the instructions told me to, and I had a clump of dye that didn't want to come out of the bottle and then got all over my hands and dyed them blue. Learn from my mistakes.  

The dye did splatter around quite a bit inside the washer, but after I was all done dyeing and washing my sweater, I wiped it down with a wet rag and some bleach based cleaner and it came right off. 

Here is my sweater now:

This isn't really the best picture because I took it when the light was bad, but it shows the new color of the sweater pretty well. I'll admit that it's not as dark or bright of a blue as I hoped for, but you can only do so much with at-home dye, and I knew that when I started. Still, I am happy with it and have already worn it more in the past month than I probably did the whole two years I had it before when it was pink.

Have you ever dyed any of your clothes? How did it go?