Banishing Boring Beige

The BEFORE photo - as in before dyeing, and before I could find the matching belt

I've been following along and watching all of Jess's bear dyeing adventures lately, and it suddenly reminded me that I had my own little dyeing project hanging around in my wardrobe, just waiting for some inspiration to hit.

It's been yonks and years since I've tried it. In fact the last thing that I dyed, was a rather unfortunate pair of high waisted jeans while I was as Uni.  Does anyone else remember when coloured denim was cool...ahem? Those jeans met an unfortunate end after my foot was run over by a taxi outside a nightclub (but that's a story for another day)...where was I?

Oh yes the beige dress!

I picked this lovely dress up at a factory outlet on Smith St many moons ago. At the time, I didn't bother to try it on, I just took it home.
It wasn't until I saw this photo of me wearing it a BBQ in 2007, that I realised that beige is a very very very very bad colour against my pasty white skin tone.

The poor dress was banished to the back of the wardrobe, never to see the light of day again.... until 2010.

Jess emailed me through all of her pot dyeing on the stove top secrets (I really didn't want to ruin my nice white and shiny front loader), but I still chickened out and asked Bec if she would help me out for the first go.

My original intention was to go to with a nice dark browny grey colour, but when I got to Becs house, she had a huge selection of dyes to choose from, and I just couldn't go past the ruby red!

The slip that is worn under the dress took the dye really well and is a nice bright red....

The dress is a blend of cotton and synthetics, and I love how the dye has actually given the stripes a much greater effect in the way that the dye has taken to the fabric.

I had to include an action shot of Bec doing all the hard work while I sat at the kitchen bench drinking coffee and snapping photos...hee hee

I think I'm going to have to wear my newly dyed dress today (over a pair of pants - its only going to be 23 degrees).

Thanks Jess and Bec for all your help!