Putting New Life into Old Onesies

Today I'm sharing a tutorial I posted a few months ago over at Simple Simon and Company.  It was during the time I was getting things ready for the arrival of baby Ruth.  I was feeling badly about the fact that Ruth would be wearing hand me down onesies that had already gone through two other children so I was looking for ways to spruce them up a bit.


Now Ruth is here and is big enough to wear all the onesies that I worked on and the beet dyed onesies are far and away my favorite.  I love the color and the way they wash and because they've already been broken in they are super, super soft.   

So because Ruth is finally able to wear these and because I really do love them I'm sharing them again over here at Project Run and Play----the highly recommendable beet dyed onesies.
 
That's right. I said "beet dyed onesies".

Weird? Probably. But I didn't start coloring my baby's undershirts with food all at once. There was a method to my madness and it all started here when I made these:

Tea dyed onesies.

And I love them. And I started to think if I could dye them with tea maybe I could dye them with other staining foods....like beets. Which coincidentally are delicious to eat when chilled and pickled. And even better when mixed with spinach and peas and blue cheese and where was I? Oh yea...staining clothes.

So I tried the beets. I used the same steps as I did with the tea dying but used beet juice from canned beets instead. (You can find those steps and instructions here  )

The outcome looked like this:

I left one onesie in longer than the other and you can tell...I like the darker one better. It came out a nice, dusty, muted, rose color that I really like.

And then of course I added trims and lace and stuff.

I am happy with the results and I'll feel a lot better about putting my baby Ruth in these redone onesies than the dingy hand-me-downs they started out as.

PS---I'm planning a little experiment with some other foods as well...like tomatoes...I'm hoping for a nice orangy red. But we'll see. It may be a sad, soggy craft fail.

Note:  I tried the tomatoes---I could never get it to stain/dye evenly and couldn't get the color darker than like an orangy peach.  However, when I originally posted this I got some awesome suggestions about dying with other types of food and undoubtedly there will be more tutorials to come.

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