The background well, that was interesting. I died white sheets a golden yellow rit dye with a little sunshine orange rit dye in my washing machine. When that was done through the wash cycle I then used scarlet rit dye. I put the sheets back to back (I used 5 of them) connected them with sturdy clips and put them all down about 2/3 in the scarlet dye. I waited a few minutes and then pulled them out so only about 1/3 of the sheets were in the scarlet and let them sit for several hours. That is where the gradient effect came from. Rit dye has some information on their site with a picture and it is called ombre or shadow dyeing. They only use one color and I happened to use 2 colors to get my 3 colors. (Red and yellow = orange). Caution: when you are doing the red dye. You have to be able to have something to let it sit in while keeping the rest of the sheets out of the dye. I used a broom handle and rolled the sheet part I didn't want died on to the broom handle. Leaving the rest of the sheets in the dye bath. I did however use my washing machine because I didn't know how I was going to get rid of red dye bath. I shut the washing machine cycle off to let the sheets sit in the dye. I have stained my washing machine on the top where sheets were sitting on it wet. I was able to use the rit wash out stuff to get the inside of my washing machine clean. When drying the sheets though remember not to run the sheets through the washing machine because you will loose the gradient. So I put wet sheets in the dryer and well my dryer is stained too. It has taken a couple of dryer loads to get the dye out of there (still stained by not staining my laundry). So if you can hang the wet sheets just make sure to wrap them in something to get them where you are going to hang them to dry because they are very wet and dripping! Hope this helps and I hope I explained everything ok.

God bless

~Sheryl