Sunday, February 8, 2015

Little by little, one bite at a time

Some time ago... well really when my husband and I got married and I went from living in an almost entirely white apartment in the city to a small home with property in the country with 4 dogs, a 7 year old (at that time) little boy and a husband who likes muddy motor sports.... I decided that a white sofa wasn't a reasonable item to have in your house. 

Sure, it looks fabulous when the cover is fresh out of the wash and pristine-ly white... but that lasts about 2.3 seconds in my house, so something needed to be done.

After comparing color samples of the little dogs muddy footprints with the shades of Rit Dye available I decided on Dark Brown. To be honest, the color I was looking for was really more of this French Roast, but as this was my first time dying anything, and I was going to have to do it in multiple batches, I really didn't want to mess with measuring and mixing dye.... yet ;-) 

So, I did what any crafty girl who doesn't know how to do something but wants to does... I went to Pinterest. I searched for dying a couch cover and just my luck Laura at Decor to Adore had the same couch I did and had already dyed their cover a lovely shade of blue! This gave me the courage to jump out and do my own!

Ok, so to be clear - I have an Ektorp sofa from IKEA. I love it, LOVE the removable slip cover. I was ready to commit..I was terrified I was going to ruin our washing machine... but I didn't. As a matter of fact, because I was so worried I actually took the time to scrub out the washer after I did the main body of the couch cover and it is cleaner now than it was before I dyed it!

Unfortunately, every place I went only carried 1 bottle of the dark brown dye I was looking for, so I bought a bottle, and did 3 of the cushions... 

That first dye went great! No major problems, the covers did indeed turn out brown... I was elated! I couldn't believe how easy it was! I ended up doing the dye bath as described by Laura, at a medium fill level with super hot water and a cup of salt, 1 bottle for 3 cushion covers. I weighed all of the covers with one of those hand held luggage type scales my hubby had... something like this one if you are interested. All 6 cushions weighed almost 7lbs and the cover itself was almost 6 I believe.

Next I went to two different places and ended up with 2 bottles of dye - enough to do the base of the couch cover... and off I went. You can see how the dye bath accentuated any accumulated grunge I may have had in my washer. Immediately after this dye, I took a Magic Eraser to it and it sparkled cleaner than I had ever seen it!


So, my couch looked like this for a week. I commute a good deal, so during the week isn't the best time ever to try to get just about anything done. My weekends are my warrior times... make that list and kill it all!


My mom acquired the last bottle of dye for me, due to my aforementioned schedule - and yesterday was the day! I dyed those last 3 cushions for a nice warm brown couch that hides little doggy footprints better than the blazing white one.


I still think that I would like to venture into the realm of color mixing and re-dye it that darker, more espresso color, but for right this minute I am very happy with it. 

The other thing I LOVE about this couch is that the white cover is only $50 which means I could buy another white cover and dye it another color to have something to swap out with when I felt like a change. One thing to note, I noticed that the top stitching on the cover didn't take the dye, so I still have some white top stitching around the kick pleats. I think it looks fine so I am not worrying about it, but just something to know if you are planning to dye your cover a dark color. 

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