Indigo Dyeing + Handmade Shower Curtain

Last month I had the chance to squeeze in one more day of fabric dyeing before the weather turned. I had a leftover indigo dye kit from our retreat, and wanted to use it up. I also had plans to do a mini-makeover on our bathroom. Blue is a calming color so it seemed like a good idea to use indigo in our tiny bathroom.

I planned to replace our shower curtain and also make a curtain to go around our sink. The sink curtain would provide some hidden storage and hide the plumbing. I looked around for tutorials for both a sink curtain and a shower curtain, but ended up winging it. I wanted something simple.


Knowing I wanted to make a shower curtain, I ordered some 108" wide Kona Cotton in white. In addition to the Kona, I also dyed a piece of Cambridge lawn in white, some cotton canvas, and a few other random pieces of regular width Kona white and an off-white solid in my stash.

For more information on indigo dyeing, check out my Indigo Dyeing Tutorial.

Here is what I dyed and I how resisted each piece of fabric:

Fabric was scrunched into big messy balls and then resisted with rubber bands. This is the piece I used for the shower curtain.


Fabric was scrunched into big messy balls and then resisted with rubber bands. This is the piece I used for the sink curtain.


Fabric was scrunched into big messy balls and then resisted with rubber bands. This is the cotton lawn piece.


Fabric was folded and secured with twine.


Accordion folded, secured with twine.


Accordion folded, secured with clothespins.


Loosely accordion folded, secured with rubber bands.


Fabric was twisted into a cone and then resisted with wrapped twine.


Fabric was scrunched into a ball and then wrapped in twine to secure.


For the shower curtain, I used the shower curtain we already had (a cheap one from Target), as a starting point. For the length, I started with the finished height of the curtain then I added 3" for a 1.5" top hem, and 6" for a 3" bottom hem. For the width, I started with the finished width and added 2" total for a .5" hem on either side. The top hem has twelve button holes for the curtain hooks.


For the sink curtain, I measured around my sink and the height from under the sink. For the width, I added 2" total for the .5" side hems, plus around 10" extra for gathering. For the height, I added around 1" for the velcro, and left plenty of extra length to do a test measure on the sink. I ended up with around a 2" hem. To attach the curtain to the underside of the sink I used home decor velcro. It's holding up okay, but I may need to reinforce it somehow, we'll see how it does over time!


At our retreat this summer I also dyed some flour-sack towels. I picked them up a few years ago for a project, but didn't end up using them. They've been collecting dust, and I thought it would be fun (and low risk) to dye them.


After dyeing, I sewed a little loop of twill tape to one corner of each towel to make them easy to hang from a hook in our bathroom.


I found this vintage metal shelf on Etsy. I spray painted it white and hung it above one of the towel racks. It doesn't add a ton of storage, but it adds some interest to the walls and has room to display some pretty things.

I'm happy with how the bathroom is coming along. Since we rent, we can't make any major changes, but it still feels nice to try to spruce things up a little. The small changes have been refreshing.