{create} ombre pillow

Happy Monday friends! Did you all have a lovely weekend? Our weekend was fantastic, until our furnace broke last night. On one of the coldest nights of the year so far. But, such is the life of a homeowner. It's being fixed today and it'll all be good :).

Last week I showed you our new living room pillows!

Today I put together a little tutorial for making your own ombre pillow.

I had a couple of white silk-ish pillow cases that I hadn't used in forever. So, I decided to experiment on one of those. I started with two colors of dye ... royal and navy blue. On the package, at least, they looked like they'd make a nice gradient-ombre effect :).

Make sure you read the directions on your dye packages. It tells you all sorts of good stuff like how to prepare the dye-bath, how to rinse and how to wash the fabric after, depending on what type of fabric it is. Good, helpful stuff.

I chose to dye my pillow over a pot on the stove. Once your dye-bath is prepared, put your fabric!

The amount of time your fabric is in the dye bath will determine the richness of the final color. So, I started by putting my fabric over half way in for just a few minutes. In the process, the color will *creep* up a little further, which creates a very cool watercolor-type effect. (Note: the color will creep on certain fabrics more than others. Silk doesn't creep as much as linen will. I think cotton will creep quite a bit too. If you're unsure, try different fabrics before you commit to which you'll use.) Then I pulled it a little out of the water and let it sit for 5-10 minutes (see photo above). Once I was happy with the saturation, I rinsed it while preparing the darker dye. Once prepared I let the very bottom of the pillow sit for another 5-10 minutes, then removed, rinsed and washed. Now, the top of the pillow looks light blue? Because it is :). It was supposed to be cream, but the dye bled a little in the wash and I actually like the light blue a little better. Nice!

 

I'm really happy with how it turned out. So much more interesting than the cream pillow I started with, right? 

So, have you guys ever dyed anything? I remember tye-dying when I was a Girl Scout. After having done this on my own, I can't even imagine the patience of our leaders. A bunch of girls with really messy dye?? I'm sure we were outside :).  Would you guys ever dye something, or is it just too messy??

Update: I am linking this post over at Beth's Tutorials and Tips linky party, and


 

Update 3/13: I'm also linking this up to the Pinterest Party, hosted by Young House Love, Bower Power, The Great Indoors and Hi Sugar.

I have a number of ombre projects on my Pinterest boards, but it was this No. Four Eleven pillow specifically: pinned here, that launched this project.

Come over and check out all the amazing projects!