I bought this American Apparel dress in one of those moments. I think it was on sale for $10 and I had it in another colour already and wore it a lot. It was completely white though and because it's a dress I usually wear at the beach it got really nasty every time I wore it.
A couple years ago ombre stuff was really in so based on a photo of some ombre dyed tights I saw online I decided to dip dye this dress so it would hide stains. I mixed some Dylon blue dye in a large pot and carefully clipped my dress to a hanger and then suspended half the dress in the pot for a while (maybe 30 minutes?) and then let it hang up outside without rinsing the dye to try and get a saturated effect on the bottom. This didn't really work. The colour is fairly consistent throughout. I then attempted to rinse the dress and in the process got dye on the top half of it making some light blotchy tie dye kind of situation. I became frustrated, let it dry and left it in the bottom of my laundry basket for 2 years.
Since most of my clothes just don't fit right now, I became desperate. I washed this dress with a bit of vinegar to set the dye and threw it on. It's not the dress I hoped for but it works for biking to the beach and getting sandy and sweaty...so attractive.
Some things I learned:
- Timing and checking on clothes in dye is probably important
- If you want an ombre effect, it is probably best to submerge the part to be dyed briefly and then hang it up so that it doesn't saturate
- I should set the dyed parts of the garment before rinsing it to avoid dye on the white parts
- Leaving something in the laundry basket for 2 years leaves intense wrinkles in a garment