Dyeing a Cotton Dress

I own a dress that I bought online consignment a while back (after seeing one retail for more $ than I wanted to spend ). When I bought it I thought it would be more gray than green, but it turned out to be an ugly drab olive color, and it had some mottling on the bodice, as well. I'd already invested a couple of hours into raising the shoulders/neckline (including removing and hand stitching the binding back on) and hemming it to fit better, but I couldn't really get over the color. I wanted to be able to enjoy it, so I decided to try dyeing it grey, my favorite color.

Drab olive color

Weird mottling on bodice

In addition to the dress, I thought I would simultaneously try to dye four mottled hand towels at the same time.

I love Dharma Trading as a source of dyes. I've dyed protein fiber wools and silks with Dharma acid dyes before, but this was my first foray into dyeing cotton with their Fiber Reactive Procion Dye. I bought 2 oz of charcoal gray, and their soda ash fixer. They have excellent tutorials on their site, and I followed the one for tub dyeing.

Assembling supplies

I mixed the quantities for 1 lb of fabric:

• 3 gallons warm water (I estimated this at about 9" in a 5-gallon bucket)
• 1 Tbsp dye, dissolved
• 3 C salt (canning- non-iodized)

Mixing soda ash

I added the wet pieces (the dress and 4 hand towels), that I'd just hand washed in hot water with about a tsp of synthrapol that I got from my mom (thanks, Mom!)

I stirred the contents continuously in the bucket for a full 20 min, then added 2 2/3 Tbsp soda ash, dissolved in warm water. I then continued to stir periodically for 60 min as I went about with other chores.

I ran the contents through the rinse cycle in the washing machine, and then a hot water wash cycle with some more dissolved synthrapol. Then I line dried.

The results were unimpressive. There was no change in the towels. The dress was only minimally improved.

After dyeing- underwhelming results

I'm not sure why it didn't work well, but my best guess is that I estimated the amount of water by bucket height, not actual volume measure, and I could have been off. I considered stopping there, as the whole thing had been a bit of a chore, but I still had some dye left. After a "cooling off" period of a few days, I decided to give the dress another go. I used the formula on the website for 1.5 gallons of water, and now measured the water very carefully. I repeated the process (in a smaller bucket).

Second attempt- the water was much darker- boding well

The results were much better, with a nice uniform gray color after the second dye effort, and no more mottling on the bodice.

After 2nd dye- Much improved

However, the poly-blend thread I'd used to alter the bodice and hem did NOT take the dye. I suspected this might be the case.

Now the poly thread is not quite right

So, I decided to redo the hem with gray thread. I wasn't going to restitch the neck/shoulder binding- that was just too much to face. I reattached the label I'd removed prior to dyeing while I was at it.

Hem redone

Now I'm pretty happy with the dress. As soon as it warms up just a bit more, I'll get to wear it for the first time.