DIY: Dye a Dress

I bought this dress at the thrift store because I love the cut of the dress, but I don't like wearing white. Soooo boring. And it makes me think of weddings.  I decided this was a great time to try an experiment in dyeing. 

Although I've dyed my hair, I've never dyed clothes.

I've done a lot of dyeing with my hair (the above photo is one incarnation of my hair...), but never have I dyed clothes. This was a first, and I decided to just jump into it and experiment. 

I had picked up this Rit powder dye a bit ago, but I hadn't tried it yet. I picked up this bucket, and read up on dyeing methods. I took a few cups of very hot water and mixed in some salt (the salt like helps with dyeing cotton). I added some dye...OK, I totally didn't measure. That may have been my first mistake...

I mixed up some blue and green together, and I was hoping to achieve a teal color. After mixing in the color, I added more warm water. 

I put the dress in there and used some disposable chopsticks to stir it around and push out all the air bubbles. 

I continued to check on it, stirring it around and pushing it down, for like thirty minutes. 

An important note here: cotton dyes WONDERFULLY, but ... whatever the crap this lining of the dress is made out of does not dye at all. It didn't dye even a little tiny bit. This is fine for me, because no one's going to see it, but it was a little unexpected. 

See the color of the buttons here? That's what I was going for. For some unknown reason, the buttons dyed beautifully, but the dress... it really just didn't take in the blue at all. I've been researching this, and I can't seem to find an answer. (NOTE: you can also see in this picture that the thread on the seams didn't dye as well as the rest of the dress. The belt loops didn't dye at all).

Honestly, I don't know if the blue dye I bought just had some issue or if it didn't like the fabric (but surely cotton should be fine...), or if the green just totally overpowered it and took up all the space in the fabric fibers before the blue could get a chance. 

In the future, I will use way hotter water. Like super boiling. I think that may have been one problem. I will also actually measure the dye. Also, I think I will go for the liquid Rit in the future for better mixture with the water, and along that line, I will also try dyeing the clothes when they are already wet (that's also supposed to help with even dyeing).

Ultimately, despite the fact that the dress didn't turn out according to my dreams, I'm still happy with the experiment, and I'm totally going to wear the dress anyway.