An experiment: Dyeing Elastic

Whilst perusing pinterest the other day I came across this great tutorial by Dana of Made for dyeing elastic

Whilst in Australia I bought some chevron fabric to make some skirts for the girls. The plan is to make them a knee length full skirt (what’s a skirt without the twirl factor?) with an exposed elastic waistband. White seemed a bit dull so when I saw this tutorial I thought I would give it a go.

Locally I could only by Dylon dye, so this wasn’t realy an experiment as such, more of a suck it an see kind of thing. I wasn’t sure about how well the dye would take to my 2″ polyester elastic but I ploughed on regardless

I figured that it would be a waste to use a packet of dye and a load of salt on 3m of elastic so I threw in a few little t-shirts, one new…

£0.50p from the local supermarket surplus store – sweet isn’t it? along with two that had seen better days…I’m sure they were both white once

I plunged everything into the dye and gave it a stir every 5-10 minutes for an hour and here are the results….

Not bad hey? I would have preferred it if the elastic had come out a little brighter, but it’s far more exciting than plain old white. I am hoping that it will go well with the chevron fabric that I bought. I now just need to decide on a pattern.

I would have liked to have made a circle skirt, like the one from Made but I think the chevron might look a bit quiffy and make your eyes hurt! What do you think?