MUSE

After nearly a year and several hours of therapy (just kidding) I’m finally ready to show you my DIY fail.  You might remember this post and this post where I spoke about attempting to make this pillow:

I mentioned, very briefly, that after two attempts to make this pillow I had failed.  But I never got around to showing you the results.  Well today’s the day.  My first attempt isn’t as embarrassing as my second, so we’ll start with that one.

Attempt #1:

I folded my fabric the way you would fold a paper fan.  Then I folded the bottom portion of the fabric and held it together with a rubber band.

 

I prepared my dye mixture in an old pot (I used grey Rit dye and just followed the instructions on the box).  I dipped my fabric into the dye and wrapped the excess fabric around a spoon so that it wouldn’t fall into the dye.  I repeated these steps two more times on different sections of the fabric…fold and dip.  After rinsing and washing the fabric according to the instructions on the box, this is what I was left with.

 

Not good enough!!! I was hoping for a charcoal grey and white dip-dyed pillow cover with lots of contrast, but after washing it, the white became pale grey and the grey became a blueish/grey color.  Not feeling it…time for attempt number two.

 

Attempt #2

This time I had a whole new game plan.  I’d start with black fabric instead of white and I’d use bleach instead of dye.  Genius!!!  Why didn’t I just do this in the first place (this is what I was thinking until I saw the results).

 

I used the same fold and dip method that I used in Attempt #1.

 

And then I sat, waited, and watched my black fabric go from orange, to light orange, to some horrible shade of BURNT.

 

How come no one ever told me that bleach could do this to fabric?!?!?

Well, in the end I got a high contrast look, just not the one that I was hoping for.  What can I say, you can’t win ‘em all .