DIY for Environmentalists: Crafting, Making, Project How-to's, and more!
Notice that my trees still aren’t a perfect, uniform green, but that wasn’t the result that I was after. When you overdye a piece, you’re never certain exactly what color you’ll come up with in the end. But with careful forethought and a judicious hand in the dye pot, you can absolutely use overdyeing to mask an offensive color and turn it into something far more appealing to your eye.
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Hi there! I'm Becky Striepe, a green crafter and vegan foodie living in Atlanta, Georgia with my husband and two cats. My mission is to make eco-friendly crafts and vegan food accessible to anyone who wants to give them a go.
Hello! My name is Bonnie Getchell and overall, I'm a craft nerd! I love making crafts, re-doing furniture, and anything along those lines. I especially love creating items that are from recycled materials like toilet paper rolls, bottles, etc.
I'm the lucky momma of two little blonde daddy-clones--we spend our days doing elaborate art projects, trashing the house, eating cheese cubes and oranges, and waiting for my partner to get home from his day job so we can pester him.
Kelly covers visual arts in and around Washington, DC for DCist and is editor of Crafting a Green World. Kelly has also been published by Bust Magazine and you can find her byline at Indie Fixx and Etsy’s Storque and has taught in Etsy’s virtual lab on the topic of green crafting.
I never saw this before but it looks interesting to try and I think I can add this to my decoration for Christmas. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for sharing this technique. I’m wondering since the trees were rinsed and not washed, if there would be a problem w/color fastness…would the overdye bleed if they were placed on a tablecloth or other cloth surface? This is definitely a technique I will consider as I am rummaging through old wool sweaters!
There would be a problem with color-fastness if the trees got wet. Three solutions:
1) Whenever possible, overdye your felted wool before you create with it. I only overdyed a finished project because it was a craft emergency!
2) If it’s a decorative object, like my felted wool trees on a cloth tablecloth, glue something waterproof to the bottom of the object, such as a piece of an old plastic grocery bag.
3) Hand-wash the object, which will allow you to completely rinse away excess dye as well as keep the finished object sound.