11 Of The Best Tips To Dye Fabric Flawlessly

Before coming to the States, I mostly used Rit dye. This was one of the few products I had access to before learning about ebay and all the other products that are available online now.

Dylon Dyes have been around for a number years, and contain a number of lovely shades to pick from. The color I was most attracted to was China Blue, which was used to dye a heavy piece of duck canvas fabric shown in the first picture. Other Dylon Shades include Amazon Green , Goldfish Orange, Tropical Green, Navy, Olive, Poppy Red, Ocean Blue, Sunflower Yellow, and Turqouise

When we moved into our home, I had a bunch of lamp parts, and dozens of lampshades that I purchased before our move, so I decided to make my own set of lamps out of the parts I had left over. I also had a set of 4 accordion plain white shades that I bought from Ikea. I loved the accordion pleats, but wanted something more vibrant for the shade of my lamp. Rather than just settle for white, I wanted to experiment with a shade of green. I figured as long as they went with my mint walls, I would be happy what ever I got as a result.

I started out using 5 gallon buckets, which I submerged each lamp shade into. I let them sit for several hours, pulled them out, and let them air dry.

Along the way, I stumbled into problems is where I needed more dye. As I reached the last lampshade it was significantly lighter in color than the three shades.

What end up happening was as each lamp sat in the dye, a little more dye was removed from the pail. I had to then figure out, or just randomly guess how much more dye to add to the existing water. If I was smarter, perhaps I would have started out with 4 buckets of dye, and pulled out all the lamp shades at the same time.

So instead of ordering in more dye, or making the long drive to the craft store, I used some Rid dye that I had, and painted the dye on to the shades. That idea didn’t turn out well. What happened is the dye ran down the shade, and didn’t dye the fabric evenly.

I ended up soaking them in water diluted bleach, and started again from scratch.

The second time around, the shades took the dye nicely, I just had to have more dye on hand. When I first submerged the lampshades into the pail of water, I left them for a couple hours. After I was happy with the color, I took an old black towel, and let them air dry in our garage. I found as the lampshades dried, the color wasn’t dark enough, so I soaked them for another full day. In the end, all the lampshades matched up quite well, and I really love the color. Not all lamp shades will take dye correctly. It really depends on the material on the shade. Natural cotton, or linen usually takes dye quite nicely. As you can see, it is an inexpensive way to update a lampshade.

Read more about my 11 tips I have learned when dying fabric here......

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