New/old bathroom towels

I am a big Project Runway fan.  I love to see the wild, fantastic, and sometimes downright odd creations the contestants come up with.  I am in awe of their mad skills, and wish I had a dress form in my size so I could learn to drape.

Once in a while, a contestant buys horrible fabric, or not enough of what they need, or just made something so ugly they have to start all over again.  But what to use when there is no fabric left?  Plain old muslin, dyed to whatever color they want.

I may not have a dress form, but I do have a washing machine, so have been dying lots of fabric for different projects since Christmas.  Remember the skirts for Sophia and Co.?  I also dyed fabric yellow for a tent, and an old torn sheet is now purple to make MORE dress up clothes.

So what does all of this have to do with bathroom towels?

Here at the Libby house we have a collection of six really awful and completely non-matching towels.  They are fine quality, but not so great colors.  Two used-to-be-blue but are now mostly bleached out pink that we got for our wedding.  One sage green, one taupe, and two very tired white.  Not what I want in my new bathroom, for sure!

I decided that I was going to splurge on new towels (splurge is relative . . . ) but then realized that the collection of six new white towels I wanted to purchase was going to cost $17 in shipping.  Seriously?!  At the same time we started painting, and I realized I wanted to bring more color into the bathroom thru accessories, and that blue towels would be a great addition.

I was in bed at midnight Monday night, attempting to come up with a solution with my tired mind when I suddenly had a brainstorm . . . dye the old towels!  Finally, I could sleep.

Yesterday I picked up my dye and got to work.  I got two bottles of dye (right in the laundry aisle at Walmart) for $5 and added two cups of salt to the hot water and dye in the washer.  (Salt for cotton, rayon, linen, or blends . . . vinegar for nylon, silk, or wool . . . throw some potato slices in for my favorite chips!)  Then I popped in my towels and followed the instructions on the bottle for number of washes and at what temperatures.  Two hours later, my towels were done!

These towels were blue/pink, taupe, and sage.  I am soooo pleased with how they turned out, and can't wait to show the whole bathroom . . . but I have a bit of sewing to do before then!