Hand dying clothes | A beginner's guide

before

after

I had been in possession of the above cream silk dress for a few years, but I confess I had fallen out of love with it. It had been a bargain when I bought it because it had some staining and ingrained dirt. I wore it once but felt that it was too dirty to be worn again.

Recently I began to toy with the idea of dying the dress a colour to cover the staining issues. After all, I would consider wearing it again if I felt that it didn't look shabby or dirty - why give it away when I could get more wear out of it? 

One issue - I had never dyed anything before, unless you counted tie-dying parties when I was 12. What if I messed it up? 

It turned out to be so simple, I fear I may have to restrain myself from dying more of my clothes and soft furnishings, just for kicks.

ingredients - dylon hand dye, £2.99 and table salt, £0.23

wash your item and leave wet

mix your dye into 500 ml of warm water. mix 250g of salt into 6L of hot water.
add your dye water to the salt water.
mix.
put your item into the water.

stir regularly for 15 minutes, then intermittently for 45 minutes.

remove from dye water and rinse with cold water.
hand wash in warm water and rinse again until the colour runs clear.

... and there you have it. Frankly, the most trying element of the whole process was the rinsing, but I can cope with that. You also cannot be entirely certain what colour you're going to get, especially if you are dying silk like I was. 

Despite this, you can see the results at the top of this post - transforming the dress into something that feels completely new. I confess I feel pretty proud of myself right now.