My New Old Dress

We have about a bajillion weddings this summer (and by "bajillion" I mean 4), which always begs the question, "What to wear?" To make matters worse, as I've mentioned before, we're on a pretty tight budget (no fun for the wardrobe, but hey, we paid the last car payment a few weeks ago!). So what's a girl to do? Going back through my closet, I found the little white dress that I wore for our wedding rehearsal last year. It was so cute, and it was a steal at Nordstrom's Rack. I knew when I bought it that I would probably never have another opportunity to wear a white dress, but I got it anyway thinking I could just have it dyed. Well, it was time to revisit that idea.

I didn't think to get a Before picture before I got it wet, but at least I thought to get one then. It's not that translucent when it's dry.

One small problem here. I think I got a little too close to the chicken wings at our second reception (which we had for our friends in Colorado who couldn't come celebrate with us in Cincinnati), and there's a bit of a grease stain down toward the bottom.

See it there? I figured that I'm dyeing it dark, it'll cover it up. Problem solved.

So. I got my biggest pot and filled it with water and lots of salt, according to the directions on the dye.

And I got my dye. Rit actually has a great color selection, and a color mixer on their website. They give offer different formulas for getting colors other than the basics they offer! But I decided to go with just straight up teal.

I wanted as dark a teal as I could get, so I dumped the whole thing in.

That, my friends, is scary dark.

Get the fabric (dress, in my case) soaking wet. There was still soap left in it from the last washing—I could tell, because it bubbled out as I wrung it dry—so I had to soak, wring, soak, wring, soak, wring, several times.

In it goes!

3...

...2...

...1

What was I thinking?!? Welp, too late to go back now.

P.S. Those oh-so-fashionable gloves are left over from my textiles class in college. Nice, huh?

Let it simmer for over an hour (directions were on the dye bottle, thank goodness). I let it go even a little bit longer, since I wanted a darker color. (Plus I was doing laundry at the same time and was downstairs when the timer went off. Oops!)

Then rinse.

And rinse.

And rinse.

And rinse. You have to get all that extra dye out of there, or else it'll wear off on your skin when you wear it, or it'll dye all your other clothes the next time you wash it.

Then dry! It can be tumbled in the dryer or drip-dried on a line.

Apparently, grease doesn't take color the way un-greased cotton does, so there's still a hint of the stain. I've found an embellishment in a slightly darker teal that I'm going to sew over it, but haven't gotten around to that yet.

But anyway, that's what I did to make my old dress new!

All Photos © Me

Peace,