To Dye For

Whilst rummaging through my wardrobe the other day I came across this dress I'd bought in a charity shop.  Although I wasn't that keen on the colours or the pattern for that matter it fitted like a glove and at £3.50 I was not leaving the shop without it.  Purchased with good intentions of dying it black, the dress took up residence at the back of my wardrobe for a year!  Yes, A YEAR!!  Now I suspect I'm not alone here.  I'm sure there's more than few of you who have purchased an item of clothing only for it to rent a space in your wardrobe and never be worn again.  I know I for one can think of at least 5 items in my wardrobe with the tags on that I thought looked great on in the changing room but after a change of heart at home, never got round to returning.  Of course I always intended on selling said items on Ebay but lets face it, how many of us actually have time to do that!?

Anyhoo..........here is a picture of the dress.  Very flowery and colourful but really not 'me'.  Hmmm I not sure what that says about my personality.  No comments on that please!





The dress before





I was pretty annoyed at myself that a whole year had gone by and I'd done nothing about this dress.  So I went out that day and purchased some dye.

The dye!!

This stuff was very uncomplicated.  Just empty the powder in the drum of your washer.  Add your item and put it on a cotton wash.  Once that cycle has finished wash it again but this time add soap powder and thats it.  Pretty simple I thought to myself but hang on a min.....whats that about patterned items?  Damn it why didn't I read these instructions more careful.  When an item is different colours the individual colours will react differently to the dye.  You must consider colour mixing rules.  OOPS!  So my dress wont come out black then Mr Dylon?

Which it didn't.  But hey I'm pretty happy with the result and might actually wear this dress at the next available opportunity.  Just a word of warning.  Polyester stitching will not dye.  You can see the stitching at the bottom of my dress is still white.  I can easily remove this and restitch in a darker colour but in some cases other items might not be so easy.

My new LBD

Close up

What dya all think?  Have you ever tried dying something apart from hair??