When I found this lovely Indian tunic at the thrift shop, I was super-happy. I LOVE tunic dresses, and figured this one could be worn as-is.
My eyes must be going. :/ When I got my tunic home and took a closer look, I saw why someone probably donated it.
That’s right. Someone ignored the “Dry Clean Only” tag and tossed this once-beautiful tunic into their washing machine. :/ The dye was everywhere, and very noticeable. :/
I hadn’t planned on doing a refashion of this piece, but I saw no other way to make this dress wearable. I dug into my dye stash for the answer to my problem.
First, I started wadding up the dress into a jar, sprinkling some black powdered dye into the folds…
Unfortunately, this box had been opened before and only had a little bit of dye left…not enough to add dye all the way up. Undaunted, I grabbed a bottle of dye that was almost used up.
As I am an honest blogger, I’ll just let you know that I didn’t think this color combo was going to work too well together, but Orange and Black were all I had on hand. I crossed my fingers and poured some hot water into the jar.
I closed the lid (which turned out to be a terrible idea) and left my project on the counter while I had lunch with a friend.
When I got back, the lid had sealed shut! I COULD NOT pry it open. I tried using a butter knife and a screwdriver. I even tried submerging the jar in hot water. Then I tried cold water. Nothing worked! I started to panic, as I didn’t want my new dress to be sitting in its dye bath for too long.
I eventually broke the jar with a hammer. No lie. Drastic times call for drastic measures, friends.
At this point, my dress was thoroughly saturated with dye, so I dropped it my washing machine for a couple of cycles to rinse all the excess dye away.
Here’s the result of my labors:
You can see where this tunic has slitted sides (hence my underdress peeking out in the pic above). The dye job ended up being more dramatic than I had intended, but I actually really like it!
I especially like how the neckline turned out.
My buddy Ryan liked it too!
We hopped over to this tasty place for a treat:
While there, I met this cool young lady who told me she was just starting to get into sewing after reading my blog…which did my heart a world of good. 🙂
Fun times in a fun new frock! 🙂
