Dying/Painting a rug?

futuremrs.inman

The rug in our playroom is a cream colored rug that use to be in our dining room. I knew it was going to get stained with paint, markers, spilled juice, etc. but it is starting to look bad. I'd like to either dye or paint it. Any tips? I'd like to either do alphabet stencils or a town scene with streets for C to play on with his cars. Any other ideas? tia!

TootsieK

I've done it once, in my daughter''s bedroom.  I did not use an overall design; instead, I used design motifs to cover the stains that were scattered in random places.  In this case, free-form flowers and leaves were the motifs

Here's what I did:

Working in one color at a time, I mixed up a double-strength dose of Rit dye -- either liquid or powdered would work.

I "parted" the area to be dyed from the not-to-be dyed, using (IIRC) a chopstick or other pointed stick, so the dye couldn't easily run from one patch to the next.  Then I used an artist's paintbrush to saturate the section with the dye and moved on to the next section.  You want the dye to run all the way down the pile, but not really onto the backing

 After letting the dye soak in for about ten minutes, I used a wet-dry vac (you could also use the vac function of a carpet cleaner) to suck up the excess solution, then set the dye using a hair dryer.  Just be careful to not get too close to the carpet pile when you're using the hair dryer, especially if your carpet is synthetic!

This dye job lasted well -- I was just careful when cleaning around the dyed areas.

 Do you know what fiber your carpet is?  Dyeing works best on natural fibers, but can also work on synthetics.