It’s all over the blogosphere and I must say, this is one of those trends I love! (unlike wedge sneakers). Along with neon pink I’ve had a soft spot for ombre garments ever since I was little and pretended to be a fashion designer. Seriously, the amounts of pink and rainbow-coloured ombre dresses I drew are insane.
I thought I might try my hand at my own little ombre DIY project. I decided on ombre bed linens. Mostly because a white duvet cover is the only completely white item I own.
The result isn’t much of a classic ombre. To me it’s some sort of landscape study in pink (woah, this makes the duvet cover sound very arty all of a sudden!).
Then there’s this tie-dye feeling because the paint clearly didn’t reach every bit of the fabric. These shapes look like weird tree-with-moss-nature-things to me. It’s more of an experimental ombre meets tie-dye duvet cover now!
I guess I’ll file this experiment under serendipity. It may not be the result I was aiming for, but I kind of like the result in it’s own weird pink-xtc-trip-way. 
Since this isn’t your typical DIY tutorial, I won’t tell you what to do. But here are a few things I’ve learned while doing this:
- If you want to paint a piece of fabric this large, you need a big container to hold both dye and fabric. I used an empty (and clean!) garbage can, but it clearly wasn’t big enough as the dye couldn’t reach every nook and cranny due to the folds in the fabric. I think a bathtub would be your best bet.
- Don’t listen too much to the instructions on the package, Technically the amount of dye I used wasn’t enough for the amount of fabric, but it was more then enough really. You only need the indicated amount for dark shades of the color you select.
- You have to figure out your own time schedule for painting an ombre, I did the bottom first and left it in the paint for the amount of time indicated on the package. The second part of the fabric I dipped for only half the time of the first round and so on.
- Don’t put it in the washing machine! This sounds stupid I know, but here’s what happened to me: originally, I wanted to top of the dovet cover to be white, so I didn’t dip it in the dye. The instructions said to let the fabric dry and then rinse it out manually. So after drying, I rinsed it from top to bottom in the shower as to make sure there wouldn’t be any pink on my white half. Then I let it dry again. According to the instructions, I would now be able to wash the duvet cover in the washing machine. So I did, there obviously was some paint left in the fabric because my top half was pink within minutes! I have no idea how to solve this problem, maybe more rinsing?
So, that’s my two cents regarding DIY ombre projects. Hopefully my pearls of wisdom will come in handy when you try it yourself! Good luck and let me know how it turns out…
). I found this great little book called Iron Me On by Mike Perry.
