Name: wendy
Message: i recently bought Lace Swag curtains that are ivory. My walls are white. the curtains just blend in with the walls. Yes i could paint the walls but i thought dyeing the curtains would be easier. can i do that in the washer with dye that i can purchase in the grocery store?

It all depends on the fiber content of the curtains. Cotton and nylon are both easy to dye, but polyester is very difficult to dye.

The dye that you can purchase in the grocery store works pretty well on nylon, but quite poorly on cotton. Cotton is better dyed with fiber reactive dye, such as Procion MX type dye which is best obtained by mail-order from any of the dye companies listed on my Sources for Supplies page. Fiber reactive dye is actually much more economical than grocery-store dye, if you are dying more than one t-shirt.

If your curtains are made of polyester, it would be easier to paint the walls. Polyester can be dyed only with a special sort of dye called disperse dye, which requires that you boil the fabric in the dyebath for an hour with noxious chemicals.