Dip dye is one of those things that has been around for a long while.  Although we’re generally on the tail-end of this trend, I love that the indigo with the linen escalates this idea into something that comes together naturally and organically. The trick is how to create indigo with Rit dye.  We’ll get there.

If you’ll remember, I liked this style of runner from Terrain for my dining room update, but it was unfortunately sold out.  Sold out, however, wasn’t going to stop me.  A dip dyed linen runner is an easy enough DIY, so I went for it.  It ended up costing me a total of $22 to make this beauty.  Not too bad.

Just like the trend, the process of dip dying isn’t new news, but here is where I was making a customized update. There isn’t really a good indigo color of Rit dye.  All of the colors they have ‘out of the bottle’ are fairly generic, and I wanted a really rich color that emulated natural indigo as much as possible.  So here is what I did to make a great indigo.  Want to make your own? Here’s how to do it.

Materials

• Evening Blue Liquid Rit Dye
• Navy Blue Liquid Rit Dye
• Fabric to dye
• Container deep enough to hold 1 gallon of water

 

Pour a gallon of very hot water into your container. Then mix in 1.5 oz evening blue Rit dye and .75 navy blue Rit dye. I use the liquid dye because it mixes easier than the powder, especially when you’re mixing colors.

Mix it all up and then get to dipping!  I folded my runner in half lengthwise, the folded it a few times widthwise so that the center of the runner would be right on the edge for dipping.

Set up a little stand or something to hold your fabric while it’s dying.  It will take about 60 minutes in the dye bath, so you certainly don’t want to hold it the whole time!

I think it turned out quite well.  Not only was it inexpensive, but I love the deep blue indigo color that I ended up with.

It’s going to match quite well with the other new ‘blue’ thing I have to show you guys soon… How’s that for a cliffhanger?!