Dye Crinoline with RIT

When the Hubster proposed to me - I knew what I wanted our wedding colors to be & I knew that I wanted to have color on me somewhere...and it was going to be pink. So - I chose to dye the 2 crinoline skirts I had. Now - David's Bridal and RIT dye will both tell you that you can't dye the crinoline skirts because of

You may also want to go and pick up some more table salt, because you're gonna need a significant amount of it.

You will need:

• Article of clothing you want to dye
• Rit dye (I used 2-3 packets for of dye for each skirt)
• Bucket you don't care for
• Salt (helps lock in color)

Step 1:
Prep the article of clothing. This was fun - I was very impressed I got the whole skirt into that sink! You want your article to be wet (not necessarily soaked, but wet - I suggest wringing it out before adding it to the dye, but I'm fairly certain I didn't do that.)
  

Step 2:
Prep the Dye. Make sure you wear gloves or else you will end up with stained hands! (it may even happen if you wear gloves...I'm just that awesome - and nothing gets it off except time. I even tried spraying my hand with Resolve to see if it would get it out. Don't try that, it doesn't work. You just walk around with 1 hot pink hand and 1 regular hand until it finally wears off - I think it took a few days; maybe even a week).

This is wear the salt comes in to play.

1/2 cup of salt.

  Dissolve 1 package of powder dye in 2 cups of hot water. If you're worried about the dye not sticking (I was because everyone told me the skirts couldn't be dyed), add in salt. I believe I used 1/2 cup per package of dye. Stir, Stir, Stir!

Set the washing machine for the extended wash cycle or just leave the lid open. The fabric should be in dye bath for at least 30 minutes before rinse begins - I was worried about the dye not working on the skirt, so I let it sit for about 2 hours. And in it goes...

Because there was SO much fabric on this skirt, parts of it kept floating up and out of the water. So, in order to avoid random light patches, we threw a bunch of water bottles on top. They were heavy enough to hold the skirt down.

Now, let it soak!

When the time is up, whether you let it sit for 30 minutes or an hour, you can close the like lid and turn the washer dial to cold water and the "rinse" setting. Make sure you rinse it enough times that the water runs clear. Then wash it with a very mild detergent in warm water and rinse thoroughly in cool water.

Now go figure out where to dry it! My in-laws were worried that if we hung it to dry in the house, it would drip and dye the floor so we set up a ladder outside and hung my skirt off the ladder until it was dry.





This is REALLY important so you don't accidentally dye anything else on your next cycle - run the washing machine on the highest water level with the hottest water, detergent and 1 cup chlorine bleach. I suggest doing an extra rinse and washing a load of whites after this cycle. You will get a pretty good idea if all the dye is out this way, and if it isn't, you can always just bleach the whites.

Worked like a charm.


Here's a picture of the skirts on my wedding day (you can barely see the light pink one- sorry)

And here's a picture of both of them side by side a little over a year later.

 

Now, I used the EXACT same dye and the EXACT same process on both skirts. The dye took better to one skirt than the other - which is probably because they were made by different companies so the materials were probably slightly different - and is most likely why RIT and DB said that the skirts cannot be dyed.

I say - if you want a fun pop of color, go ahead and give it a try - I was very pleased with what I got. I ultimately had 3 skirts on my wedding day. My dress came with some crinoline underneath it (so that stayed white), then there was the light pink skirt, and then the dark pink skirt.

Good luck!

Sara



Oh - and here's a before and after of a dress I dyed for a friend's wedding: