Chair Affair

Using "Vintage Pillowcases" is an easy way to dress up ordinary chairs for a party.

I love linens and have collected more than my fair share over the years. I am not always particular about provenance. I love them all and consequently, I have collected too many. So when I considered throwing a party and wanted to unify the look of mismatched chairs, I pulled out my store of pillowcases and doilies and started stitching.

The pillowcases were all so different that my attempt to unify my mismatched chairs only left me with mismatched chair covers. That’s when I started searching for information on Indigo dyes. Over dyed vintage rugs are popular now and I see them frequently in design magazines and online. Those rugs gave me the idea to over dye the pillowcases. I am drawn to Indigo Blue and I knew it would look great in the bungalow, but I knew that Indigo was a complex color that I wouldn’t find in a Rit Dye bottle.

The true Indigo dye recipes I found in my online search were more complex than I was willing to try. Then, I found, “We Love Indigo! How to Mix Rit Dyes to Create Indigo Blue.” You can get Indigo from Rit Dye! You just need more than one bottle and more than one color. There are three recipes for Indigo on ritdye.com. I bought the supplies for all three (Deep Ocean Blue, Black Blue and Purple Blue) but only used the recipe for Purple Blue. The result was the perfect unifying affect that I was looking for from the beginning.