DIY Ombre Tights | Make Thrift Buy #34

Hello! Welcome back to another episode of Make Thrift Buy! And as always, this is the

show where YOU send in items of clothing or
accessories that you’ve seen on the internet,

and then I do my best to recreate them. Now
a couple of people have challenged me to try

and do ombre tights! I've actually owned a
pair of these back in the day – but this

was back in 2012, and, let’s be honest – most
tights do NOT last for 4 whole years. Which

definitely makes spending $20-$50 on a pair
of ombre tights – which is what I found

these kind of tights online for – pretty
prohibitive for most of us.

So, I’m going to try and make some ombre
tights for myself!

Let's get started!

Okay, the obvious things that I needed for
this project were:

- Thick white tights
- And dye.

I’m using this Rit dye which is made for
synthetic material, which is what you will

need if you’re dying something like tights.

Alright, so! Welcome to my kitchen, which
is where I will be doing my dyeing.

The first thing I did here was to rinse out
any “finishes” from my tights by soaking

them in cold water for about 5 minutes.

Another thing that I’m going to need for
dyeing the tights is a large, stainless steel

pot. Now… I just wanted to cut in and say
right now – check back in at the end with

me about this; I don't think that it's a particularly
good idea to use a pot that you're planning

on using for cooking later on, but I'll go
through that in a bit.

Anyway, I filled the pot about 1/3rds with
water, and I turned my stovetop on to a medium

setting so that my water would heat up to
around 75 degrees Celcius, or 167 Fahrenheit.

I also put some gloves on so I wouldn’t
dye my hands orange, but in retrospect, rubber

washing-up gloves would be better than these
so that you’re also protected from hot water

and potential burns.

Now, you DON’T want your water to boil.
I got the water in the pot up to about 75

degrees Celcius, or 167 Fahrenheit.

And now, the dyeing begins!

So, with this dye you’re supposed to use
about 1 bottle of dye per 2 pounds of fabric,

I guess if you want a really strong colour.
But I only want to dye half my tights; I also

didn’t have scales... in the end I kind
of figured out that I would need about 1/10th

of a bottle for one pair of tights.

And in this whole process, I'm not going to
be particularly accurate - I'm just going

to kind of eyeball it as I go.

The first thing that I did was to put a really
tiny amount of dye into my pot – so about

a couple of spoonfulls – and then I mixed
it around.

Then, I took my soaking tights out of the
sink, wrung out the water, and carefully plopped

them into the pot for literally about 20 seconds.
This will dye the entire tights a kinda pastel

peach colour, which will hopefully make the
ombre more subtle later on. While doing this,

I held the top end out so that I didn't burn
my hand, and I also tried to mix them around

a bit so that the dye would get to every part
of the tights.

And then, I dumped them straight

back into that cold water, rinsed the dye
out, and then I wrung the water out.

Then, I tipped quite a bit more dye into the
pot, and I mixed it around.

Now, here I’ve set up two pots. This pot
will be for the half of the tights that I

don't want to dye anymore, while this pot
will be for the other half of the tights that

I do want to dye a stronger colour. So I put
the top half of the tights – the part that’s

going to remain light-coloured, into this
empty pot. Then, I carefully put the rest

of the tights, from the toes up to about just
under halfway, into the dyeing pot.

Then, I carefully stirred the fabric around, to make sure that the dye is getting to all of

the fabric!

And then, after they were in for about 30
seconds, I pulled the tights out about 1 inch.

Then, I stirred, waited another 30 seconds,
pulled them out about 1 inch, stirred, waited

30 seconds and pulled them out another inch.

After doing this a few times, it’s time
to add more dye to get a stronger orange as

we move further down the tights to create
that nice gradient ombre effect.

So, I poured in a couple more tablespoons…
or so?, stirred to mix the dye evenly, and

then I immediately pulled the tights out one
inch. Then, I stirred, and I waited about

1 minute this time, and then I pulled them
out yet another inch.

Then, I poured in more dye, stirred, then
left the tights to sit for about 30 seconds

this time, pulled them out about an inch,
and then finally, I left the very tips of

the tights to soak for about five minutes.

When the five minutes was up, I carefully
removed the tights from the dye bath and brought

them over to my stainless steel sink.

In my sink, I immediately rinsed the tights
with cool water. Now – this is important

– I rinsed the tights with the coloured
bit at the bottom and the lighter part at

the top. I didn’t want the dye to run back
up the tights into the lighter sections, so

it’s important that I rinsed them this way!
I stopped rinsing once the water running off

the tights is clear.

Then, according to the Rit Dye instructions,
I needed to handwash the entire thing again

using mild detergent in warm water. Then I
rinsed them off again in cool water, and FINALLY,

I let them dry, by hanging them up like this
so that the dyed parts are at the bottom.

Now, I had a bunch of dye left so I also decided
to also try and refresh a scuzzy old pair

of white tights that I have owned for years,
and also, a pair of white knee-high socks!

And with that, I was done!

So, how did I go?

[music plays]

So, that was it! My conclusion is:
[scissor snipping sound effect]

Alright – the issue of using a cooking pot
to dye things. Now, I had googled this really

briefly before starting the whole dyeing process
and the Rit website themselves said that it

was okay to use a cooking pot as long as you
cleaned it really well with bleach afterwards,

so I was like "great! Let's go then!"

It was only afterwards that I did some more
googling and um – scared myself a little

bit with stuff that other websites said – because
lot of other websites said that you should

NOT be using this pot again for cooking.

So, you know, to be safe, probably don't use
a pot that you plan to cook food in afterwards!

That's my disclaimer.

So yeah - I totally ruined our one good big
cooking pot. Oops!

This was the first time I ever used fabric
dyes before and – apart from the whole ruining-my-good-cooking-pot

thing – this was a really easy project!

The total cost of the first pair of tights
came out to about $10, and the pair of tights

and socks that I already owned even cheaper
still – and after doing three pairs I still

have about 2 thirds of this bottle left! And
now, I pretty much want to dye everything

ombre. What are some other synthetic materials
that I'd be able to dye orange? If you think

of any, let me know in the comments down below!

And I now have a designated dyeing pot as
well. Yay!

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Then leave it in down in the comments below!

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Thank you all so much for watching and I’ll
see you all next time! Bye!