Frugal Luxuries: Revived Towels

Mom, stop reading this. I'll never hear the end of it... (my mom affectionately calls me Rainbow whenever I do something she considers crunchy or Martha when I do something crafty - and this qualifies as both)

I have a lot of mis-matched towels. Are you with me on this one? You know, all of those random towels that you picked up 2 at a time because they were pretty and on sale but didn't match your current towels, or the stray ones leftover from your parents/roommate/ex that are perfectly usable, but might be a little ratty/discolored/faded?

When I got married I thought I'd have matching towels. It just seemed like something you had when you were married, matching towels. Not so much. Though I give major thanks to my Aunt L. who gave us white towels for a wedding gift - they're the wedding gift that I use the most frequently and I think of her often. And it makes the bathroom look so much nicer with a white towel drying on the bar instead of the once-blue towel with the frayed edges...

I've been thinking about trying out fabric dye, and what better fabric to test it out on than my old (not-white) towels? Perhaps if they're all the same color I'll stop hiding them from guests?

So I used a bottle of blue and a bottle of green (because I love me some turquoise/aqua/blue-green) and went to town. Well, before I went to town I used a packet of color remover (which did nothing) and then a round of bleach (which did something, but not a lot).

On to the color part! I followed the directions and let the washer fill with some water (not as hot as it should have been, thanks old house) added the dye and salt, and then added the towels. That I forgot to wet first. Whoops.

Pretty!

But, hey, the results were pretty awesome! They didn't turn out the same color by a long shot (what's up with the bright green one???) but they're all in the same color family, finally. You'd never know they started out life as pink, purple, blue, orangey-green, tan, etc. Well, except for that purple-ish one on the bottom, that one obviously started out purple. And they look lovely next to my white towels. The ones that turned out blotchy did so in an interesting way like I did it on purpose. Which I must have, of course.

For less than $10 I have "new" towels - and since I rinsed the dye bottles really well they went into recycling so there was no trash involved. Woo!