So This Happened.

I had every intention springing a freshly-painted guest bathroom on you today, but alas, instead of painting last night (after weather and traffic and the thing I'm about to share with you kept me from going to do a craft night thing with some buddies last night, argh), I came home to find this:



...Wait, wait, lemme back up.  Remember this pic from the other day?

I'm dyeing the Surya rug that I won a couple of years ago.  Same process as I used for the black wing chair, which came out really well.  That job was fast, easy, and the color has never once rubbed off.

This time, however, instead of Rit dye, I'm using a brand called Jacquard (because a friend gave it to me, so I've been playing with all the colors).  It's meant for protein fibers like wool and silk, and is also supposed to do a great job on nylon and polyester - and this rug is wool and poly.

I'm not sure why the dye is coming out;  I suspect because I just WAY oversaturated it in an effort to make sure it soaked all the way through the fibers.  But anyhow, though I placed a bunch of random furniture on it yesterday while I was at work to keep the animals off of it, just in case, I came home to this:

Daisy was really confused as to what I thought was so funny.  And then she got a bit annoyed with me for taking so many pictures of her (these were the only two that weren't just a total blur).

One no wait, two, THREE dog baths later - because after I washed Daisy, I discovered that Shelly's face was blue, so I washed her, too; and then I washed Raven because even though he's black and I couldn't see any dye, I figured he must be covered, too - and he was - I threw a tarp over the rug and then filled it with furniture and plastic tubs to keep it in place, so that I won't find blue animals in my house again this evening.

I'm going to borrow that carpet cleaner from that friend again this evening, and use it to wash the excess dye out of the rug.

Hopefully this story will have a happy ending.  In the meantime, please laugh at my blue dog.  I bust out laughing every time I look at the pictures, hehe.


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NEXT!

Okay, so, the costumery-blitz leading up to last weekend is FINALLY OVER, and it's time to PUT YOUR FOOT ON IT AND STAND!!!

Oh, no, wait - that's 13th Warrior.  Which is like my favorite movie ever.  But I digress. 

It is seriously time to get crackin' on the housey stuff again.  BFF Sylvan is moving in in just 39 DAYS.   I have a loooooot to get done in that time.  

In the last couple of months I've been cleaning and clearing space almost nonstop, in between working on like a bajillion sewing commissions for the SCA and prepping (and cleaning up after) the Halloween party.  (I swear, the people at the Goodwill donation site must know me by name by now).  The next step is to start actually preparing rooms.  To wit: 

• paint the guest bath
• move all the stuff from my sewing room into my bedroom
• demo the sewing closet, and turn it back into a "regular" closet
• paint the sewing new bedroom and closet, and then bring all of my bedroom things into it'
• organize and arrange the master bedroom new giant craft room (hereafter known as The Room of Requirement)
• build my master closet into a new awesome craft supply storage room

And and and and and.  I mean, SO much to do.   I was going to start last night, except that at the SCA event over the weekend, I managed to pull a partial dislocation on BOTH of my shoulders, so I've kinda been sitting around with noodle arms for a few days.  

But last night, I did manage to do this: 

Yes, it's a terrible, terrible phone pic. Because it's not done.  

But you'll get to see the finished result, and a whole bunch more, very soon.  I promise. :) 

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About That Chair...

So when I said I was going to re-upholster the chaise and the green wing chair, I may have lied a bit.  Accidentally.  I'd been trying to decide whether or not to try something else with that chair first, and last night the mood struck me and off I went. The project isn't finished yet; but I'm halfway through and it's looking really promising!

The "green" wing chair before: 

• faded in very weird and random patterns
• several horrible shades of ex-green

I thought about re-upholstering the chair.  And about simply making a slipcover for it - or even just buying a cheap one.  But then I kept seeing blog posts like this one, and pins like this.  I decided that I'd try it, and if it didn't work I could always just make a cheap slipcover out of some old cotton twill I have from a previous furniture project. 

And so I mixed a capful of liquid Rit dye, in black, with about a 1/4tsp salt and a 1-1/4c HOT HOT HOT water, put it into a spray bottle, and went to town: 

During...

I chose to go with a spray bottle instead of a brush after a test on the bottom of the chair showed me that a brush would take A FRILLION YEARS and also ruin my brush, because of the lumpy-bumpy weave of the fabric.

I was concerned about striping, but figured if I can spray paint things, I could do this.  And, as it turns out, the same technique kept striping and blotching from happening:  sweeping, side-to-side motions with the sprayer.  I noticed it also helped greatly to (a) follow the grain/nap of the fabric, (b) spray in vertical sections, and (c) work from bottom to top, which keeps the top from dripping off the dry fabric below it if to much builds up in one place and begins to run. 

Other things I learned: 

WEAR GLOVES.  

Not-Really-After...yet...

So, here's the wing chair, sans seat cushion, after a single coat of black Rit dye. After I sprayed it (in sections), I went over it with a hot blow dryer to begin heat-sealing the color.   The next stage will be to apply a second coat, and then to spray it with vinegar to set the color even further and heat-treat it again; once all that's dried completely I'll take it outside and spray it with a fabric sealant.  

The best thing about it so far - aside from the chair already looking velvety and lush - is that this morning, without any further treatment at all, I couldn't get any color off the fabric with my hand!  

The color's pretty even, especially given how faded the fabric was to begin with.  A second coat will even it out completely;  and it'll also darken the color to actual black.  Rit's "black" does a great job of dyeing things purple when you don't use enough of it!   I also still have to do the seat cushion.  So far, I've only used about half a bottle of dye (I had two bottles to start with). 

More on this as soon as it's done!  :D




P.S. - my knees hurt. Something I always forget about spraying large objects? It's basically like doing three hours of squats and deep knee-bends.  >_<

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