Overdyed Rug Tutorial
http://en.paperblog.com/over-dye-diy-30898/
So, about two months ago...once the weather started to warm up (I live wayyy up north and it was still snowing in April...snowing a lot) I began scouring my local Craigslist for a wool rug. All the blogs told me I needed a real wool rug in order to tackle this project and, low and behold, I found a perfectly hideous gem for $40:
[A note about Thiox: Most of the blogs I have read have used Thiox to bleach out the rug before applying the dye. Apparently this stuff is quite yucky as a full-on respirator is needed when you use it. I really try to avoid chemicals like that so I opted not to bleach out my rug with Thiox. Instead of bleaching out my rug with Thiox, I decided to "overdye" it with a dark color to overwhelm and saturate all the light colors in my rug. If your rug is a dark color and you want to overdye it with a light color like yellow or light pink, you may need to consider using Thiox.]
So, anyway, after the bleaching debacle and after a loooong time 'a drying. It was time to dye! Like other bloggers before me, I headed over to the Dharma Trading Company website and bought an 8oz container of the "deep purple" color acid dye. I knew I had to pick a deep, dark shade to mask the navy and dark green colors in my Craigslist gem. I have this grungy old humpback utility sink in my basement that I figured would be the best place to dye (probably not a good place to die though). I didn't care if it was permanently purple...keep that in mind when you're dying: my utility sink is now a Barney nightmare.
So I gloved up and agitated the rug back and forth between the two sinks, moving it over the hump each time. I wanted to make sure I got it thoroughly immersed. Looking back, I probably should have agitated more and for longer (I moved it around for about 30 minutes but I think an hour would have been better) because there are some slightly lighter areas in my rug. You'll see this below in the final pictures. The agitation and rinse process was A LOT of work! I was hand-moving this enormously heavy rug back and forth over that stupid hump--my back was absurdly sore afterwards. Like I said, I'm a weakling. After about 30 min soaking in the dye bath, I drained the water and began the rinse process. This took forever. I rinsed the rug for probably about 2 hours total. At the end, I was still getting slightly purple water out of the rug but I had had enough! I had the bf help me move the rinsed rug outside where I laid it out to dry in the sun. It was dry after about 3 full days. Take a look below for the finished product! As you can see from the pictures, it definitely has a few slightly lighter patches and the green was never completely covered for some reason. But I like the dimensionality this brings to the rug. In the pictures it looks navy blue but in person it is a lovely deep, rich purple. My only complaint is that it doesn't lay completely flat. This rug has a cloth backing on it and I believe all the water expanded the wool rug surface but not the cloth backing...so now the rug is slightly bigger than it's cloth back. I am hoping with time it will smooth out (lay down and take it!). If not, I am sure I can take the backing off. Either way, I love the finished product! For about $55 in supplies I got this little beauty: