Fabric Dye Job

A couple weekends ago I experimented with fabric dye for the first time.   I was thinking I might want to dye the curtains in my dining room, but I wanted to try something a little smaller first.   So, I decided to experiment with garment dying a dress I picked up at Goodwill a few years ago. 

This dress had already gone through one transformation.  When I picked it up, it was a weird, mid-calf length but I couldn't resist the polka dots so I hemmed it to a mini-dress.   But, even with the shorter length, the oatmeal/natural color wasn't very wearable - I only wore it twice over the past year.  Instead of tossing it out, I figured I'd try dying it.

I was thinking blue, but my local hardware store only had dye in black and dark green.  Since I wanted the navy polka dots to show through,  I decided to give the green a try.

Here is the process:

1- First, I boiled water on the stove in a pot big enough for my dress.  And, added 1/3 of the bottle of Fabric dye.  (The package said 1/2 bottle for 3 gallons of water but I didn't have that much so I just estimated)

2- Soaked the dress fully in hot water from the faucet.  (I guess if it's wet when you submerge it in the dye,  it picks up the color more evenly.)

3 - Submerge the dress into the heated water and stir continuously for 20ish minutes. 

4- Rinse out the dress with warm water until the water runs clean (This was the most time consuming part of the process,  it seemed like there was an endless amount of dye in the dress!)

5 - Hang to dry - check out the photo below.  At this point,  I was convinced the dress was going to be pure black, and you could hardly see the polka dots.

But, after it dried, it was much lighter.  Here is the side-by-side before & after.

It definitely didn't turn out "Forest Green" like the package said, but it's a nice dark greyish green color. I had trouble getting a photo that accurately showed the color but here is an awesomely awkward picture of me wearing it out.