Hooray for having a washing machine that once again gets hot water! 🙂 I knew I’d want to dye something right away! I chose this little dress for today.
This dress suffers from the same condition of many other little dresses that find their way to thrift store clearance bins. It’s faded and stained.
Oh…and the red parts have bled into the white parts. :/
Now…this dress in unsellable is its current condition, all it needs is a little dye job to get it looking nice & new! 🙂
I reached for a box of dye.
Some of you guys might think my color choice is a bit odd. I went with dark brown because Brown + Red = Maroon, which is one of my favorite colors! 🙂 I also really wanted to make this dress a bit more muted.
I mixed up my dye…
…and added it to my washing machine!
I left my dress in the dye bath for about 40 minutes, then gave it a rinse & dry!
Now that dress is looking new and fabu! 🙂
I spent my evening just hanging out watching Woody Allen movies with the very sweet Pongo. 🙂
Cheers! 🙂
What a well-chosen color–the crocheted bits turned the perfect shade of maroon! 🙂
I’ve just dyed five things. Three in violet in the washing machine and two in Arabian blue in a saucepan on the stove. Until I read this blog I would never have dyed a patterned item but the dress I did has turned out great!
Thinking I need to give Rit some serious consideration. What an inspiration!
I am pleasantly surprised! At first, I thought, “WHY? What’s WRONG with this dress??” And then, you told us…. Stains on such a dress are always a pooper and colour fading makes everything blech. I am super amazed by what a transformation you made with this dress. That wee packet of brown dye you selected did wonders. Wowza.
Wow, you do such a good job!
Do you already know about the stain-lifting magic of OxiClean? I get lots of once-worn-then-stained clothing from garage sales. You can tell it’s even been dried in the dryer. But if the stain is organic (something from the body or food), all you have to do it is soak it in a bucket with dissolved oxi in it, and it comes out SPARKLING with zero stain at all. It doesn’t work for stains from cars, chemicals, or fake dyes. But most will come out. It’s wonderful!…*le sigh*
Hi Jillian,
I’ve tried dying a few things recently…mostly solids. What do you do about polyester threads that don’t dye…and buttons that don’t match therafter. Do you ignore or avoid such dying situations?
Thanks.
Polyester has to be factory died, but I’ve heard of people spray painting it. Ack! Sounds like that’ll make it rigid to me. But if the color’s really that atrocious, if cut into pieces it would be more manageable as either an accent color somehow, or stiff.
As for buttons, if they don’t match I remove them, and if one or more is still needed, I add on what works better, and save the other button for something else.
I hope this helps!
I have been so jealous of you. We don’t have a Goodwill Outlet around here. Soooooo….I did some sleuthing. My favorite, already very cheap, thrift shop will sell me a huge bag of their “unsaleable” clothes for $1 a bag. A bag weighs at least 10 pounds. I can root through it, but the bags are clear & I can get a rough idea. I’ll be trying a few of your ideas shortly!
Can’t root through!!!!! Geez I need to learn to proofread!!!
Bought 5 bags…have sorted. There’s some good stuff in there. Lots of men’s shirts & ties that I can’t find anything wrong with other than they’re dated.
Wow that made a huge difference! Definitely muted the bright and Alice in Wonderland-ish-ness. I’m inspired to pick up some Rit!
My daughter and I were so inspired by your ideas we did one of our own! Took an old pair of shorts of hers (she’s 9) that were a little too tight, ripped the crotch seam, sewed each side up and made it into the cutest tube top with straps! Now we’re looking around for more clothing to re-purpose! Awesome blog!!
That sounds adorable, I hope you 2 have a blog??
Disclaimer: I have nothing to do with this site, just a fan/stalker 😉
Love the dress!
I really liked the original dress color, but love the new one! You transformed it from cute to fabulous.
That turned out really amazing. I didn’t think I’d like the brown at all (I normally don’t like it at all but I LOVED it on this dress!
You genuinely saved that dress. The before reminds me so much of Alice in Wonderland, Queen of Hearts. The after is perfect!