One of my clients bought a dress on clearance at H&M without trying it on, and when it didn’t fit her she gave it to me, thinking the cut would work as a maternity dress. It does, but I think she was blinded by the $5 pricetag because the original colour? It wass white people skin colour. Here, let me show you:
Since I’m not super keen on walking around looking nude and the dress is 95% cotton, I figure I could fix this with some dye I had left over from my purple jorts.
First, I washed the dress so it’d take the dye properly, and plopped the still-wet dress straight into a bath of Petal Pink Rit dye to completely eliminate the original colour (you could skip this step if your dress is already a non-disgusting colour). I let it simmer on the stove for a while (like an hour) before rinsing.
Next came the dip-dye portion of the process: I mixed up some Fuchsia dye and instead of submerging the whole dress, I hung it over the bath with just the bottom half of the skirt in the dye and let that simmer for another hour, occasionally raising & lowering it to try and prevent a really harsh line between the shades of pink (I wasn’t entire successful at this).
Through the dipping and the power of osmosis the dye spread up the skirt, creating a light-to-dark pink gradient. How lovely!
l-r: original colour; after first dye & rinse; after dip-dye & rinse; washed & dried
supplies:
• a cheap cotton dress in a light colour
• one or more colours of fabric dye
tips:
• as always, if you’ve never dyed clothing before, FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE PACKAGE OF WHATEVER DYE YOU PURCHASE
• be aware that the base colour is going to show through the dye, so use common sense when choosing colours: don’t put blue over yellow and expect to get blue, you know? Because it’s gonna come out green.