Monday, January 28, 2008

Tie-Dyeing the Furniture

Tie-dyeing the Couch!

Recently I met someone from Google who is actually more into tie-dye than I am (my close friends all gasped when they heard that). He has a huge wardrobe of tie-dye, but had never actually tried it himself before doing it at a group activity I ran at Google. And then he was off and running...

He later told me that he wanted to tie-dye his IKEA couch! It's a big L-shaped couch, and he got a white cotton slipcover for it (the great thing about IKEA couches is the availability of slipcovers).

We got together at my place to work on it. It took about 4 hours to tie (separate pieces for each cushion plus the body), another 4 hours to dye, and another 4 hours to wash out. We went through nearly 2 gallons of dye!






It's hard to see from the picture of the whole couch, but each seat cushion is a spiral. The couch looks even more fabulous in person than it does in the picture!

More Furniture!

Big chair with blue and green tie-dyed slipcover
This used to be an ugly orange chair left over from an old housemate
I liked his results so much that I got off-the-shelf slipcovers from Sure-Fit for my own sofa, loveseat, and chair. Like the first couch, this took about 4 hours to tie, 4 hours to dye, and 4+ hours to wash. This project also took about 2 gallons of dye. Now I finally have matching furniture, and I love them!
Long couch with blue and green tie-dyed slipcover













The back also continues the pattern:






Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Dog Blog

Fabulous, Poochie!

Lacey, our random-mixed puppy, is 11 months old and weighs about 8 pounds. This size S Dharma t-shirt fits her pretty well. Is she cute, or what? (Yes, she knows she's cute!)



I was doing a serious binge on doggie shirts the other day. Here are a couple more:


White dog in overly-large blue tie-dyed t-shirt
The green one above is a size M hoodie. It fits her fine, though she refuses to wear the hood (hey, I'm lucky she puts up with the clothes!).
The blue one is a size M T-shirt from Dharma, by the way. It's definitely too big--she gets her front paws tangled up in the sleeves.

Supermodel

Lacey has decided that she likes cameras! I was taking a picture of my throw pillows for my stitch resist page, and she jumped right up and posed with them. Aaaawww....

White dog in tie-dyed t-shirt with three small tie-dyed pillows

That's a size M ruffled dog T-shirt. I'm mentioning sizes and her weight because it's really hard to judge what sizes you need until you actually try it on the dog! She's a pretty leggy 8 pounds--thin chest and no fat on her--just fluff.

Puppy Love

In the following picture, Lacey is 3 months old and weighs just over 3 pounds. This size XS Dharma t-shirt is a bit big on her, but the XS purple hoodie shirt fits her pretty well!

Small white dog in tie-dyed t-shirt

Small white dog in tie-dyed purple hoodie


Big Dog in Town

Black giant schnauzer in green tie-dyed t-shirtThose doggie t-shirts even come in size 2XL! This giant schnauzer looks so handsome in his tie-dyed shirt! He weighs about 95 pounds.