Dyeing White to Ivory

Jan 22, 2012 by Lindsay

In the nursery we have an ivory bedspread that I love. It’s simple and versatile and I bought it because I figured it could adapt to any changes that we would make to the nursery without having to be replaced every time I re-decorated! When we found out that baby #4 was on the way I decided to wait until we knew what we were having before I did any other decorating in the nursery, so it has been lacking a bedskirt for awhile now! I had played with the idea of making a bedskirt but quickly changed my mind when I found THIS bedskirt on target.com for $10! For some reason it was the king size bedskirt that was on sale but it worked out because I had the twin bed and the crib that needed a skirt so I just cut up the king and made two skirts out of one!  The only problem that I was left with was that it was bright white and I needed it to be ivory. Then I remembered that my mom used to dye lace, fabric and our tights using coffee or tea! I wasn’t sure exactly how she did it but after a little online research I found enough information to figure it out.

Here is the bedskirt before. White and wrinkled.

All you need is some cheap tea and hot water.

If I had been dying something smaller I could have just used a pot but obviously a bedskirt is much larger so I used the bathtub. I ran the water to get it as hot as I could but I also boiled two pots of water to make sure it was really hot. Then I added my tea bags until I got a nice dark color. (I had done a sample the night before with some of the extra fabric, that way I knew how dark I needed my “base” color to be.)

Then I added my skirt and worked it with my hands making sure to saturate every bit of fabric and getting an even color.

Once I got it as dark as I wanted I drained the water and immediately rinsed it with cold water until the water ran clear. Then I washed it with cold water and dried it. After a good starching and ironing this is how it turned out.

I am very happy with the way it turned out. It is obviously not an exact match but it is a nice subtle ivory and it’s no longer bright white! I did find that the soft cotton of the bedspread (the part that you don’t see under the mattress) absorbed a lot more color than the actual skirt part did. Using the tea also caused it to take on more of a brown-ivory color as opposed to the yellow-ivory color of the bedspread, but I’m ok with that. One tutorial I read before attempting my project described it as more of an “antique ivory” and I would say that is very accurate. If you decided to try it make sure to do a sample first so you know how your specific fabric will take to the dye!