No, this is not about spilling ink on a dress. However, in my search for stepper motors for a laser cutter, I found some great printers on craigslist.org that DIDN'T include stepper motors. Arghh..... I removed the ink cartridge from one printer carcass and wanted to see what was inside, so I pried it apart. The module came undone fairly easily. Inside, there were fiber pads soaked in red, yellow, and blue ink (I don't remember if there was a black pad). When I took one out and soaked it in warm water, the ink came out to make a really nice dye bath. I combined some colors in varying proportions to make different colors. I then cut strips from a sock and placed one in a lime green dye bath and one in a purple bath. I boiled and agitated the lime green bath with my magnetic stirrer hotplate and left the purple bath to sit for an equal amount of time. Then, I removed both and set them to dry. The result was a pair of "interesting" armband/bracelet things. Maybe they could be dyed to make a color-coordinated set of armbands? Perhaps one could make patterns?
However, since I won't be wearing them much, I subjected them to more experimentation. I used scalding hot water and laundry detergent to wash them by hand. As it turns out, the agitated and heated armband (lime greed) held its color better than the purple, although both faded
considerably. Don't wear them in the rain!