It's no surprise to those of you who actually read my blog that I yet again fell off the blogosphere for an extended period of time. But I'm here now so let's move past that shall we? K cool.
I'm here writing today because I am in need of a cream lace dress. A close friend of mine is getting married in less than two months and I was asked to be a bridesmaid *pause for imaginary applause*. I couldn't be more excited for her!! I'm honored to be by her side on her big day.
One problem.
I'm on a tight budget because I'm doing my own saving and every penny counts. So, I did some internet digging and some closet digging to come up with a solution. Which brings us to the topic of this post. I already owned a white lace dress that I'd only worn a couple times and decided to find out if i could somehow get it to be a little less white. Bridesmaids in white is a no.
So I discovered that I could use black tea to dye my dress, super cheap and easy.
Here's how I did it:
First off I'll give you a list of the things i used
-earl grey Lipton black tea (four bags)
-tea infuser (optional)
-water
-salad tongs
-rag
-large pot (bigger is better)
-sink ready with cold water
-bleach small container and gloves
-blow dryer (optional)
-stove top and kitchen sink
-white clothing item (preferably cotton for better dyeing result)
So, to start off, I HIGHLY reccomend that if you're going to replicate this you wash your garment thoroughly, whether it's new and you've still got the tags on or you've worn it and sweat in it a couple times, you need to make sure you get rid of any chemicals that are currently on the fabric, they WILL change the way the dye takes.
Fill up a pot of water as high as you can without worrying about it overflowing (about an inch below the lip) and submerge your garment in the water to it's completely submerged and wet, this will ensure that the dye takes as evenly as possible.
Play with it for a bit making sure the water soaks everything and then wring it out and set it aside.
Put your tea bags into the infuser (if you have access to one big enough). This is to make sure none of the tea leaves escape the bag, although I'm sure they're designed not to I wanted to be extra cautious. Place the infuser in the pot and bring it to a boil. Watch and make sure it doesn't boil over, lower the heat if you have to.
Once the pot of tea is steeped enough - how steeped it needs to be depends on your preference, darker tea means a darker dye, more tea bags mean a darker tea - this should only take about 5-10 minutes, bring the heat down to medium and take the tea bags and infuser out of the pot, then put the garment back in with your tongs.
Continue to agitate the tea and move the garment around to make sure it dyes evenly. You may need to wipe up some stray tea with your rag, but no worries it won't stain your stove or counter if you clean it up as you go
After you feel you've reached a little darker than the color you want (it will fade a little bit with rinsing) I ended up having to wait 10-20 minutes, turn the heat off and wait another 10-15 minutes for the tea to cool a little bit
Take your pot of water over to the sink and carefully dump it out, don't burn yourself it will still be pretty hot. Keep one of the tea bags aside for later.Fill the sink with cold water and put your garment in to rinse off the tea. The cold water should help seal in the dye a little bit.
At this point you should check for uneven dye marks, and here's where the washing comes in. I didn't wash my dress before dyeing it and that's where these lovely stains came in. There was sweat that I couldn't see in the armpits and the tea took to that area like crazy, creating these nasty brown pit stains. Yum.
Thank goodness for bleach. But this won't make it perfect, just less noticeable, it turned out to be more of a yellow than the cream that the rest of the dress ended out, but the yellow won't be nearly as noticeable as the gross brown.
I didn't get many pictures from here on out because my phone died but I'll do my best to explain.
I took a small container and my rag, put on some gloves and got dabbing. As i dabbed I dipped the dress back into the water each time i was satisfied with the color to dilute the bleach and stop the process from turning the dress too white. Once I was done I gave the pits one final rinse.
The bleach still ended up whitening some of the parts that weren't extra stained so at this point i took that tea bag i had set aside and dabbed it on the parts that needed to get darker. I'm not sure if it will stay but I didnt rinse it off after this step
I then plugged in my hair dryer and got to heat drying the dress outside of the dryer to avoid shrinkage and to help with yet again setting the dye.
All in all I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out!! The stains under the arms aren't so bad once it's on and you cant even really see them in the pictures I took of it so I'm no devastated.
Here's a before and after against some white printer paper:
The lace shell was 80% cotton 20% nylon and the lining was 80% polyester 20% cotton so they dyed differently, but it's fine in this case.
Hoorah for DIY and saving a pretty penny! I couldn't find a single dress that was cream enough, long enough, and cheap enough to be what I needed, so four bucks to buy some tea and get a craft in to occupy myself was the perfect solution for me.
Till next time folks!
