I’ve begun the process of sleep potty-training my daughter. In anticipation of having some mishaps along the way, we set out to get extra sheets.

Unfortunately, children’s mattresses do not seem to have standardized sizes as with larger mattresses, so back to Ikea we went. I had promised her that we could pick out any colors she wanted, only to find that now Ikea only stocks those sheets in white.

I’d just watched a video from Sea Lemon about tie-dye and figured that would be a good way to salvage this endeavor. I had plenty of Rit dye on hand, so we wet about preparing to do some tie-dye.

We had two sheets, so we chose to try both the spiral and heart methods. The heart pattern turned out to be much easier than I had anticipated, and the swirl came out pretty reasonably well, too.

It was messy, but fortunately the plastic I put down on the table caught everything. I found it pretty stressful to give dyes to a five year old, so I was a little edgy through the whole process, but she had fun and I think she found it rewarding.

I followed the post-dye instructions, washing out the dye, boiling it, setting it out in the sun, etc., and was encouraged by the early results.

They did, however, fade quite a bit. The patterns are definitely still there and obvious, but they’re more of a pastel color at this point. In the future, I plan to give Procion dyes a shot, set with soda ash. I guess most people are wary of working with chemicals, and like the convenience and simplicity of Rit. However, I would prefer brighter colors.