Today I am going to do a dye wash on the fabric of this chair. I painted this chair a while ago, it’s been done in Graphite with Dark Wax. I just wanted to add a little bit more colour to it because I think it’s looking maybe just a little bit dull.

So, it’s a drop in seat, I’m taking it out and now I need to know how much colour I’m going to add. What I am going to do is make a mix of this colour, Provence, with some water.

Now, every colour and every fabric is different. You never know, there isn’t a recipe
which you can say it’s going to be two thirds this or one-third that or whatever. You cannot do it because you never know. Each fabric is different – it absorbs in a different way – and each colour is different as well.

These are the same fabrics and they’re all done in different mixes, you just need to do a little test. This is cotton and these are linens. That’s the fabric as it was to begin with and that’s the colour was quite a lot of Primer Red for instance. You’ve got to test.

So, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to put a little bit of Provence there and now I’m going to find how much water I need to put in there. That was just a dab at the end of the brush. I’ve made there a mix which is really watery. You can see it’s quite transparent –you can see the black underneath. Now I’m just going to do a little bit there, that’s the bit that’s covered and what I wanted to do is to show the texture underneath. That seems to be fine to me. So it seems to me to be about half and half for this one.

Now I’ve got to decide where the masking tape is going to be, where the line is going to be. Am I going to do it right in the centre? Probably not. Probably better to do it, just off… just about there.

You can either have a large area or a small area. Just press down well, so that nothing goes under. The next thing is I am going to use the big brush actually. You don’t want to load this up with lots and lots of water. So, what I will do is I’ll wet it and then get rid of some of the water on there. The colour is there, the mix is there, but it’s not loaded up.

[Finishes painting] And now, I’m going to take the masking tape off. So that’s it! I think looking really, really nice! If you were going to do this on curtains or you were going to do pillows, cushions or anywhere else where you were a bit worried about – maybe you were going to wash it – you could heat seal it either by putting in the dryer or ironing it or putting it in the sun and that will just make it more colour fast.

So I’m now going to put it back into the chair. It looks really good I think!