My friend bought a metallic thread pintucked viscose dress on a whim because the fit was flattering on her. Unfortunately, the color was an awful light taupe that would make anyone look like a corpse. It hung unworn in her closet.
I told her I would experiment on it if she would agree that it was OK if it was ruined. I wanted to try a cold batch dye process because it was such a small project that I did not want to waste dye and I wanted to avoid using the 6 cups of salt and tedium that would have been required in a washing machine method.
After machine prewashing in Synthrapol I soda soaked the damp dress for 20 minutes then threw it in my washing machine on spin cycle to remove the excess water. Then I mixed a Tbsp of Truffle Brown Dharma Fiber Reactive dye in 3/4 gallon of urea water. The dye had been pasted and dissolved using ¼ cup of water and 2 Tbsp of casoline oil. I did not bother to strain the dye. I put the dress in a kitty litter pan and poured the dye over it, turning the dress occasionally. The final lazy girl step was squishing the dye through the fabric by hand. I hand pressed out the excess water, left the dress in the pan, put the pan in a garbage bag, and left it to batch in my indoor laundry sink overnight. The next day I did one quick hand rinse and then put the dress in the gentle cycle wash with Synthrapol, followed by a cold water soaking in Milsoft in the machine, then a final cold rinse.
The result surprised me. There must be 200 long pintucks on this dress. There is not a fleck of undissolved dye or a single streak. The dress is color fast and the fabric is nice and soft.
The nagging question now is if I could get such good results if the outcome was important….
I told her I would experiment on it if she would agree that it was OK if it was ruined. I wanted to try a cold batch dye process because it was such a small project that I did not want to waste dye and I wanted to avoid using the 6 cups of salt and tedium that would have been required in a washing machine method.
After machine prewashing in Synthrapol I soda soaked the damp dress for 20 minutes then threw it in my washing machine on spin cycle to remove the excess water. Then I mixed a Tbsp of Truffle Brown Dharma Fiber Reactive dye in 3/4 gallon of urea water. The dye had been pasted and dissolved using ¼ cup of water and 2 Tbsp of casoline oil. I did not bother to strain the dye. I put the dress in a kitty litter pan and poured the dye over it, turning the dress occasionally. The final lazy girl step was squishing the dye through the fabric by hand. I hand pressed out the excess water, left the dress in the pan, put the pan in a garbage bag, and left it to batch in my indoor laundry sink overnight. The next day I did one quick hand rinse and then put the dress in the gentle cycle wash with Synthrapol, followed by a cold water soaking in Milsoft in the machine, then a final cold rinse.
The result surprised me. There must be 200 long pintucks on this dress. There is not a fleck of undissolved dye or a single streak. The dress is color fast and the fabric is nice and soft.
The nagging question now is if I could get such good results if the outcome was important….
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