When I posted my plan for my eight-year-old daughter’s room, I mentioned possibly using Ikea Vivan curtains. I checked them out in the store & thought they would be a great choice since the color was very close to the curtains on my mood board & they matched one of the three shades of pink in the pillow fabric I was using, plus they were only $10 a pair. Then, I got home, ironed them all, & hung them in the room.
Once hung, the curtains felt completely wrong for the space. The color was too bold & I just did not like the way they looked. I decided to leave them up for a while to see if they grew on me, but after a couple of weeks, I decided they needed to go & made another trip to Ikea, this time to buy Ritva curtains to dye pink. (Totally copied this idea from Little Green Notebook.) I picked up a bottle of Cherry Red Rit Dye, poured half of it in 12 gallons of water (I used a plastic storage tub) & put my wet curtains in the water. I let the curtains soak for about seven minutes before checking them, since the Rit website said to let the fabric soak for 10- 20 minutes or until the desired color was achieved. I thought the 10 minutes was a minimum time, to allow the color to soak in. After washing & drying them, I realized they were the exact same color as the curtains I didn’t like! (Can you tell which is which in the photo below?)
I spent the next 24 hours trying to remove the color from the curtains using Rit Color Remover. I poured a package in seven gallons of water & soaked one curtain panel. After a few hours the curtain was a very faint shade of pink. Wanting to save time, I decided to use the washing machine method for the other two. After an hour long cycle the curtains were unchanged. I put them in the plastic tub that I had used for the first panel & after soaking for about 24 hours they looked like this:
Looking at these now I probably should have just tried to dye them again, but instead, I went back to Ikea for the third time & bought two more sets of Ritva curtains. This time, I used the same mixture 4oz. cherry red rit dye with 12 gallons of water. We basically dipped the curtains in & immediately pulled them out of the water, rinsed them, & washed them with detergent.
It’s not a perfect match, but this shade of pink goes with the room much better.
I just have one more project to complete before I am finished with Elie’s room! Please hop on over to Linda’s blog & check out the other makeovers in progress.
Also sharing at Life on Virginia Street as part of DIY Summer School
