This is my first instructable but not my first DIY project. This project had the website diyphotography.net in mind and strives to help develop it into a vibrent online community. This backdrop is simmilar to those sold online for a couple hundred dollers! But guess what? for arround 20 bucks and about an hours time I've made one myself, and now I'll show YOU how!

Step 1: Parts List

1. 9X9 feet of muslin fabric.
2. RIT dye and salt
3. 18 Gallon Plastic "tote"
4. Twine to tye up fabric
5. Pot to boil water

Step 2: Wash the Fabric and Prepare Dye Mix

Pre wash by hand the muslin fabric. I did this in the shower with a little detergent. Basicly, just swish it arround in soapy water and rinse out untill its not bubbly.

Step 3: Prepare the Dye

The box of RIT has all the instructions. The hotter the water the better this dye will absorb. Disolve RIT and salt in pot with water.

Step 4: Bunch Up Fabric--this Is Where It Happens!

This is where you get to be creative! the pattern you make in this step is what will influance the overall look of your backdrop. What you must do is take that damp, clean pice of fabric, lay it on a large waterproof surfice. flat, and crunch handfulls of the matirial towards the center. Then, once its in a ball, take cheap twine (got mine at the dollar strore) and randomly wrap arround the fabric ball. dont get too crazy at this point with the tightness of the string. you're trying to keep your design together, not bucle it up or make the ball too dense to absorb the dye.

Step 5: DyeBath

Fill your 18 gallon plastic bin a little under half-way with as hot of water as you can get out of the tap and make sure you're doing this in a place that will survive getting dye spaters arround. No matter how carefull you are, there will be some contamination of the surrounding area.

Carefully pour in your dye mixture. I actually put some more water in the mix then the instructiuons so that the hot boiling water would bring up the temp of the bath overall. REMEMBER with RIT, hotter is better (within reason).

Keep the fabric down in the bath with a stick. I used a pice of PCV pipe. The max absorbtion time seems to be a half hour according to the RIT box. I fliped the fabric ball, which was realativly flat on the oposing sides, every 5 min or so, for a half hour.

Step 6: Cut the Cord

Whatever color it is on the outside is the color the darkest part will be. This is the fun part, when you'll un-doo all the tyes and see how it ended up. If you think the parts restricted from dye are "too white", after untying dunk the whole thing in the dye again for a min to overdye the fabric. Keep in mind, if you overdye, the variations in the color will not be as obvious.
Dry the backdrop flat, you'll notice it will be a couple shades lighter when its dry. You dont really have to rinse it out unless you want, since it will just be hanging up anyway, and probbly wouldnt need to be washed. You'll also notice this nice crumpled texture that makes it a great backdrop!
This project had photography in mind, but this could be used as decoration in a room as well!

Step 7: USE IT !!

After it was dry I took 4 binder clips and clamped them evenly acrooss the top of the fabric. I 'm going to put little white hook-screws in the wall to hook through the holes in the binder clips but for the photo below I just used clear package tape to hang by the clips (be carefull when removing tape, the paint may come with it!).

This is somthing you can do *really* easy takedowns and setups with and you can use any wall in your house and there is no need for a "blank wall". This is in front of my closet.

When its not up, leave it balled up in a corner somware so you dont loose all the cool wrinkely texture.

I hope you ernjoyed reading this and it helps you out. Now make your own!