Reduce, Reuse, Recycle & Get Crazy With Dye

When we were buying for Boo during pregnancy we had no idea of the sex, so everything we bought was white, green or yellow (with the occasional rainbow), post birth basically everything was a sea of pink and frills, and every single thing got saved, the small mountain of vacuum seal bags in the third bedroom is a horrifying testament to just how much we bought and were gifted, so when we found out at the 20 week scan that we're expecting another girl there was no way I could justify buying much more clothing.

With this in mind I decided to get creative, given that a substantial amount of Boo's clothes up to 0-3 months were white, I went out and got a few packs of Dylon hand dye and I am a batch at a time slowly eradicating the white from the stack.

starting with Amazon Green I did two batches, one 250g batch which is the darker colour, and a second (slightly larger... perhaps twice as large as the vests are heavier than the muslins) batch which is the lighter colour. Here it is drying

PICTURE

And then French Lavender. This time I didn't weigh it out, I added stuff one item at a time till I found a colour I liked the look of and then left it (for slightly too long) to develop, then added a second batch just of muslin cloths to give a really pale colour. I definitely didn't dye as much with the lavender, but even the first batch was very pale and the second was bordering on grey during the drying proccess, I probably wouldn't use it again, and in light of the results I'm going to swap the Powder Pink I have for a deeper colour.

Here is the green and most of the purple washed and dried, as you can see the second batch of purple is veeeeeeery pale...

PICTURE

Next I went for Sunshine Yellow. I'm not a huge fan of yellow normally but going through the white things I've found a number of bits that have suspicious yellow marks, it seemed far easier to go with the yellow than to try and banish it first. Here is the first 300g of bits during the dying process:

PICTURE

It dyed pretty well, I dumped some of our old white cheeky wipes in the left over bucket but there wasn't a great deal of dye left in the water by that point.

With all three colours (three packs of dye, 2 batches of each, so 6 batches in total) done and triple washed on the longest setting in the machine (over night, economy seven and all that jazz) then washed together in fairy with softer and tumble dried I am taking a break to await the 28 week scan so I can check one final time before dying the remaining clothes pink that it looks like we're having a girl!

PICTURE

I therefore leave you with this masterpiece and the reassurance that if I didn't screw it up it's pretty fool proof, so long as you start with a fairly vibrant colour if you plan to use the water twice... also don't forget the gloves! PS, those of you reading along will recognise some of these pieces in the hospital bag post which will follow in a few days!

#BabyClothes #Dylon #Upcycling