I have started a new project (more about it in another post) and realized that several of my fabrics were not quite the right color….in particular, they were too bright for the project. So, Deb from my favorite quilt shop simply said “why dont you over-dye them”. She also told me that she uses RIT dyes to do the job. On the way home, I stopped by a store and picked up a bottle of black RIT dye and hurried home to give it a try. I read the instructions, but decided just to wing it and see what happened……

The first step was to fill up a pan with hot, hot water…..

Add a little salt

Add some dye (no measuring here) and stir it around

Add the fabric for a few seconds

Put fabric into a cold water bath to rinse.

Here are the pieces that I over-dyed, with the original on the left side of each piece.

In the two on the right, I ended up putting the fabric back into the dye a second time to make it a bit darker. The batik piece was hard to dye so I ended up soaking it for several minutes and even adding more dye to the pot. Apparently, the light dots are treated in some way that keeps them from absorbing the dye.

The bottom line here is that I LOVED the process and will never look at fabrics the same again!!!