Last week I shared a tutorial to make a star printed swaddle blanket, and today I’m sharing this cute ombre version. I love the idea of making your own swaddle blankets, as they can be pretty expensive to buy and it’s more fun to make something yourself anyway!

(Remember when I made that linus the lamb sock animal? Henry was just a few months old!)

It was my first time trying an ombre dye and it ended up being a lot easier than I thought. Although, as with any dye project, the set up took some thought and planning.

Instructions after the jump!

Photography and styling by Liz Stanley. Assisted by Maddie Bachelder.

I found easy ombre directions from the Rit Dye site. However, the gauze is so thin and the color I was looking for was so very light that we had to adjust things quite a bit. Here’s what we came up with for ombre dying thin material like this swaddle gauze fabric:

1. Fill a bucket with lukewarm water, 1 cup of salt, a squirt of washing detergent, and the box of Rit dye.

2. Fill another bucket with cold water and scoop out about 4 cups of the mixture above into this second bucket. (This essentially makes a very very faint and diluted dye that we’ll use at the end for the top of the blanket. We wanted it to be ever so slightly yellow and there was no other way to achieve that look, even with a short dip time since the fabric is so thin).

3. Wet the fabric in water and then dip the bottom 1/4 of the fabric into the first bucket, swaying the fabric back and forth in the bucket for 30 seconds (the swaying is how you avoid that harsh line).

3. Dip it in 1/4 deeper now and sway back and for for 15 seconds. Dip it in again for 5 seconds leaving only 1/4 of the fabric out of the bucket now.

4. Now pull all the fabric out and ring it out starting at the top down (as pictured above).

5. Dip the entire blanket in the second cooler and more diluted tub for just a second. Really, that’s it.

6. Rinse out the whole blanket in cool water holding the lighter end up and bringing the dye down.

7. Rinse now in warm water until the color runs clear.

8. Ring it dry and then throw in the dryer.