Adventures in dyeing a lace parasol, Part 3

Continued from Part 2…

When I was in painting class, one of the things I had to remember was that paint always dries darker than it looks when it’s wet and spreadable. This is also true when dyeing fabric, only I completely forgot about that when I finished the dye bath, poured all my dye down the drain, rinsed out the fabric and set it up to dry. So the next morning when the fabric was fully dry, I was a bit disappointed to see that my parasol wasn’t a nice deep red as I had intended, it was fuchsia and black lace.

I let it stay fuchsia for the next couple of days, wondering if maybe I’d like to keep it that way. So those days went by. And no, I want my black and red parasol! Solution? Re-dye!

I got a new bottle of Crimson Rit dye to use, and instead of only leaving the fabric in the bath the minimum time, I kept the parasol fabric in the dye for nearly an hour and a half in an over-saturated dye bath. This time I took note of the fabric becoming darker than what I wanted knowing that it would lighten after it was rinsed and dried.

I let it dry on the porch, and this time around the thunderstorm didn’t start pouring down rain and thrash my wet parasol around with the wind. It took a couple of hours to fully dry, but the result is a darker, less fuchsia red! A red that I am quite happy with.