Stage Designs

Throwback: Sunset Dye

Amber Schultze and Jenifer De Figueiredo from Prairie Heights Community Church West Fargo, ND brings us this stage design for their sermon series titled The Princess Bride. (Originally posted August 2013)

Inexpensive 36″ wide cheesecloth and RIT brand fabric dye were used to create the layers of colors on each piece of fabric. The process started by cutting the bolt of cheesecloth into 10′ length sections. The top portion of fabric was given an ombre blue effect. The remaining fabric was dipped all in yellow. The next portion was dipped into orange (leaving some yellow alone). Wine and dark brown followed, layering the colors on top of each other in smaller sections as we went down the fabric. The fabric was quickly rinsed in cool water after each color addition.

Once the fabric was dry, they cut each length in half creating 18″ wide individual panels. Inexpensive 4′ lath wood was used to layer each fabric piece onto and stapled into place. Once in place, they cut each fabric piece to varying lengths to give more visual interest to the bottom.

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Tagged in LED Scrimped Together

6 responses to “Throwback: Sunset Dye”

  1. Jenifer De Figueiredo says:

    Love it! Love it! Love it! This is my favorite we’ve done. Missing PHCC and you all immensely!

  2. Deborah Nelson says:

    Great design. Thanks Jennifer and Amber on your service and dedication.

  3. Jake Wandel says:

    Nice work. Cool idea using cheesecloth…

  4. susan says:

    I love this. I love how it looks like it’s been lit up with lights, but it’s really dye. I’m curious if you know if it still shows up if there’s no black backdrop. I’d like to suspend it at different levels with no backdrop, but maybe it’s too sheer?

  5. Emily Williams says:

    How long did you leave the cloth in each color?

  6. Jenifer De Figueiredo says:

    Susan: I don’t think it would matter with the background, particularly if they are overlapped. You can see in the pictures when we were letting them dry on the clothesline without the black back ground that the colors are very visible, even when spread out singly and more see through. Also there are different grades of cheesecloth. We purchased a medium one (50 grade) because we were afraid the black background might come through too much. Here’s the link where we got it: http://www.onlinefabricstore.net/search.htm?Ntk=primary&Ntt=cheesecloth&Nty=1&D=cheesecloth&Ntx=mode+matchallpartial&Dx=mode+matchallpartial
    There is a 90 grade one that is less transparent.
    Emily: It varied, we were matching the colors to the logo we had for the series; you have to kind of play with it. I’d say about 5 – 10 minutes per color section, but the blue took really fast and we wanted it to be very light next to the yellow so we literally dunked it and brought it right back up and let it sit longer for the two higher/darker sections of blue. To prevent a hard line at each color change, we realized during the whole process that if we raised the part that we were just dying up higher than the previous color section before we rinsed it out and squeezed it, we would get some random bleed back which was desirable for what we were doing. You can see that more in the blue sections.
    In all Amber and I were so thrilled with the results. It turned out exactly as we planned. Cheesecloth is a great material to work with, it’s inexpensive, took dye well (which is great when you don’t have lights) and can be manipulated in a variety of ways. I’ve thought of a bunch of ideas since then. I can’t wait to use it again!

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