Thursday, March 29, 2012

Get Your Retro On


I recently finished this darling retro coffee ad for my kitchen,
but I was sorry that I used such a bright white fabric. 
It just didn't seem to match the 1950's tone of the pattern.

Here is the finished piece with the white fabric:

Well?  I thought I would try dying the fabric in coffee to see how it would turn out. 
Having never done it before, I was a little nervous,
 seeing how I already had stitched the entire thing (I'll never get those four months back...)

I started with really diluted coffee, since I wasn't sure what the result would be and then slowly added more of the coffee into the bowl to darken it.


I checked the fabric every 10 minutes or so. 
When I was happy with it, I rinsed it out with fresh water and let it hang dry. 
 Then, I ironed it out and framed it with a walnut frame I found at a flea market (perfect size!)


I probably could have gone a bit darker, too, but I didn't want to alter the color of thread too much.  Hope this inspires you to play with dying your own fabric - it's really quite easy and lots of fun!

Happy crafting!

xoxo
Genevieve



3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Amazing! I never thought to dye it with the finished project.

Genevieve said...

Thanks! I wasn't sure if it would make the thread a funky color or not, but it really worked out well. Next time, I will dye it first though, so I can go a lot darker if I want.

Aline Lacroc said...

I love this!!!