crinkle ribbon

I kept seeing this cool, crinkly, pretty ribbon on projects in magazines, so of course I Googled it to see how it was made. I just typed 'how to make crinkle ribbon' into the Google search. It is just rayon seam binding that has been dyed and wadded up into a ball while it is still wet and left to dry like that. The next day you have crinkly ribbon!

As luck would have it, I had purchased a spool of 1/2" off-white rayon seam binding a few years ago, but never did much with it. So I cut off a piece, got wet it, wrung it out, and dipped it in a jar of a pink Rit dye bath that I had leftover from another project (I was dyeing bottle brush Christmas trees that I had bleached the green out of, I'll do a post on how to do that another time. Or you can Google it now if you can't wait and learn it from someone else. I love Google for finding out how to do stuff, there is almost always a tutorial or video out there for whatever you want to learn.)

It was a little too pink for what I wanted to put it on (my Valentine ornaments) so I rinsed it, wrung it out and dipped it into a jar of  an instant coffee mixture I had left over from my elf dolls that I made at Christmas time. That made it a lovely antique rose color. When it dried, there were dark spots here and there, it was just the perfect antique-y touch. Then I did one in the teal dye the same way.

These are the first two I did, they were dipped into the instant coffee to age them.

You can buy this seam binding in almost any color, but the spools have 1,000 feet of ribbon on them, and cost anywhere from $7.50 to $13.50 a spool, depending on where you buy them. It is more economical (and more fun) to create your own custom colors. If you search on-line for tutorials you will see there are several ways to color the ribbon other than Rit dye. Some of them show how to make it in variegated colors.

The darker colored ones started out as the 'natural' color, which is kind of dark, it looks like it has been tea dyed. The brighter ones started out as white. The pile on the green dish is the ivory color that has just been dipped in water, wrung out and wadded up.

This is a closeup of the wet ivory colored ribbon.

Since I had used up my original spool making the antique pink and blue, I searched on Etsy until I found the best deal to buy some more. I ended up ordering several different variations on off-white: ivory, winter white, eggshell, natural and light gray, because you will get a different final color from the different base colors. You can also get this rayon ribbon in 1/4" width, I bought a spool in eggshell white, but have not done anything with that yet. I also went to my local variety store (Gregg's True Value in Whitney Point) and bought a new bunch of packets of Rit dye in all the colors they had! I'm sure I could spend a whole day playing with these ribbons! You can use them to hang ornaments, make necklaces (you might want to set the color according to the Rit package directions if you are going to wear it), or tie up a pretty package. I put mine in a fancy jar and just look at it!

Let me know if any of you try it!