While most people think of cherry blossoms when they think of Japanese flowers, or maybe wisteria, hydrangea are also very popular in Japan – and like with cherry blossoms and wisteria, there are some amazing gardens in Japan that feature hydrangeas. I have a personal connection to these flowers as well; they were the featured flower of the centerpieces at my wedding.

I had originally envisioned making baloon themed centerpieces to fit with a theme of the movie “Up,” but it ended up being too much work. In the end I decided not to make myself crazy with DIY wedding projects, and instead chose hydrangeas because of their ball shape, which feels a bit like a baloon.

We were married in October, not June, but since Florida is a pretty warm place we didn’t have much trouble sourcing hydrangeas for our big day.

Whenever I work on hydrangeas, it reminds me of my wedding, and of the movie Up, which never fails to make me smile. I also love working on hydrangeas because it gives me a good reason to dye watercolor style fabric – in this case a combination of purple, blue, and green.

Although I use a number of different dye techniques to get different effects, the watercolor technique is my personal favorite. I didn’t invent it of course, but I did figure out how to make it work on my own through trial and error.

If you’re wondering how I got this watercolor effect, here are some short and sweet instructions for achieving the watercolor effect:

Instructions for Watercolor Dye Effect

Materials

  • Jacquard Green Label Silk Dye in 2-3 colors
  • Fantastix Round Tip Dye Pens -or- paintbrush/dotting tool
  • Silk Fabric

Dye Steps

  1. Using a dye pen (or alternatively a paintbrush/dotting tool), apply dots of each dye color to the silk fabric. You get a better effect by putting dots of different colors next to each other.
  2. Allow fabric to dry for no longer than four hours, and a minimum of one hour.
  3. Rinse the fabric in room temperature water.
  4. Allow fabric to dry overnight before setting with steam or fixative bath.

Notes

  • Coverage does not need to be 100% perfect (ie, no white fabric showing) as there will be some bleed between each dot of dye.
  • The longer you let the fabric dry after dyeing, the less bleed there will be.
  • The sooner you rinse the fabric, the lighter the color will be as more dye will come out in the rinse.
  • With green label dye, you can mix and dilute the dye with water to get a wider variety of colors and shades, but the more diluted your initial color is the more diluted your resulting watercolor effect fabric will be.

Anyhoo, that is all I’ve got for today. 🙂 I hope you enjoyed this short tutorial and new hydrangea hair pin.

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