I played with dying fabric this weekend. I started with these braided trivets which I made a while back. The original fabric was multicoloured with red, blue, black and white and I upcycled it by tearing strips of about 1.25" and braiding them into long lengths. I used navy thread and a wavy decorative stitch when I sewed up these round trivets using a heavyweight brown and navy floral fabric as the substrate. So the colours were off in regards to coordinating so I dyed them with Navy Rit Fabric Dye!!! They turned out well in colour but in hindsight I would have preferred to have a finished substrate as the dying and washing frayed it quite a bit. I will trim off the long pieces and use blanket stitch with navy embroidery thread to finish off the edge of the substrates. I really like how the front of these look with the original colours providing some variety in the colour and the braiding giving them nice texture. I have one more length of the braid which I dyed and so will see about sewing that up into a trivet with a more suitable substrate fabric. I did dye some of the brown and navy floral so I may use some of those pieces. The two lighter ones were only left for a few minutes and therefore the pattern shows quite nicely. As the dye became diluted I continued to add pieces of fabric - white cotton, blue cotton with a printed white zigzag pattern, the peony fabric (cotton) had a white background, several pieces of white poly cotton which did not take the dye as easily and lastly a pair of light coloured jeans which are now more a medium tone. I rinsed them until the water ran clear and then washed and dried them. New fodder for getting creative with!!!! I always enjoy dying fabric and am looking forward to doing some red and maybe brown as well. Therese
