You Will Need:
Packages of cotton cheesecloth (measure width of space)
2 containers of black dye
Scissors
Bucket
Stirring stick
Garbage bags
Salt
Gloves

Directions:
01. I purchased some regular cheesecloth, on the back is said it was Cotton, which is much easier to use. For the dye I chose Rit Black Dye #15, which requires salt and can easily be found at almost any supermarket/pharmacy.

02. First open up all the cheesecloth, the Rit dye says to fill a bucket up with hot water a little more than half way. Add a cup of salt and stir. Pour in two containers of black dye and stir, make sure not to get it on your clothes!

03. Put in the cheesecloth, and push down using the stick, I let them sit in the dye for several hours…just to make sure they are as black as black can be. Stir every 20 minutes or so.

04. Lay out either some cardboard, or overlap several garbage bags on the ground. Put on the gloves and ring out each section of cheesecloth over the bucket. Lay flat across the bags or cardboard. You can also hang them up to dry.

05. Allow to dry, this can take overnight to a day to fully dry.

06. Once dry, hang them up in the area desired. The reason I chose so many pieces is because the cheesecloth looks best overlapped, otherwise it looks too thin. To achieve the results I did, first hang the cloth all the way across the area. Than go back and overlap pieces across the areas where each pieces of cheesecloth meet. Basically over the middle of two pieces.

07. Once you have all the pieces up in the way desired, cut little random slits in the bottom of each piece and ripped to desired rip height. I cut some, ripped some, cut holes, ripped some of the holes etc. I cut the middle section a little shorter so that each of the sides looked a little longer. There you have it, midnight cheesecloth, black as night! For future use, I plan to add additional cheese cloth to allow for more thickness and fullness. With experimentation, I found additional layers of black cheesecloth looked better and fuller. To hang up: I used a staple gun to attach it to the wood of our house, which turned out to be a bad idea. What I do now is staple gun the cheesecloth to a piece of wood (measure length) and hang it from little chains. You could also use a shower curtain rod and utilize rings with clips to easily move the panels around.

© Oct31st.org 2005