Dying Un-dyeable Curtains Ombre

Here’s a project I did a few months back, at the start of summer.

You know when you get stuck on something and even when it turns out its impossible, you are too stubborn to let go? That’s what happened to me with my curtains. I snagged some cheap, opaque white curtains on sale from Target a while back to use as closet doors, but I have never loved the look the gave me. I decided I absolutely had to dye them a dusty, rust-peach colored ombre. Turns out, my curtains are 100% polyester – you know, the fabric that doesn’t take dye? I considered other ways to alter my curtains: trim, painting, stitching. I cut the top tab-style. But I could not let go of my ombre idea. So here’s how I “dyed” my polyester curtains in a cheap, unconventional way.

What I used:

• White, 100% polyester curtains
• Freshly brewed coffee
• Acrylic craft paint in peach, yellow ochre, and red
• Buckets
• Water
• A clothesline
• Stubborn determination

After some research, I heard you could “dye” with diluted acrylics. It is not common because it does not seep into the fabric the way a true dye does, it’s more a way to paint an entire piece without brushing it on yourself. But I decided to do it anyway.

First, I brewed up a couple pots of coffee and dumped what I didn’t drink of it into a bucket containing my curtains. I let them soak in the fresh hot coffee outside, all the while praying none of the cheap stitching would dissolve. I let it be patchy since I just wanted to dirty the base color of my curtains before dying.

While waiting for my shower to heat up, I filled a large bucket some of the way with water. (I live in California so obtaining water for crafts this way makes me feel less guilty.) After I was clean I mixed up my paint using primarily a peach with yellow to tone down the orange and red to warm it up. I found about a gallon of water to quite a few tablespoons of paint to color the fabric best.

I hung my coffee-d curtains from a clothesline with the bottom halves or so sitting in the paint/dye mixture. Every so often, I moved them up a level. I chose to add some additional paint for the very ends to get them even darker. For once, California was my friend since I believe the heat helped the curtains take the paint and set it.