The Problem With Experiments...

Is that sometimes, they just come out all weird.

Lemme back up.

Remember the Ikea linen dress, that once was gray, got renovated, and then dyed purple?

This one. 

I wore it to Crown Tournament a few weeks ago, and on the way home from the event, my friends and I stopped Waffle House (a longtime road trip tradition of mine).  They had just mopped the bathrooms.  Raise your hand if you already know where this is going.

I thought I got my dress off the bathroom floor in time;  I grabbed it the second I smelled bleach...but it was too late.  When I got home I realized that nearly the entire hemline, and some of the front of the skirt were covered in huge, white blotches.  

Damn it. 

I considered spot-dyeing it, but I didn't want to end up with patches along the bottom that were dyed differently, or overlapped, or what have you.  So I opted to lighten the dress and re-dye the whole thing.  Since this purple was achieved with plain ol' Rit dye, I thought I'd give Rit's Color Remover a whirl, since I'd never used it before.  I barely worked.  When I dyed the dress purple originally, I had to do it twice, because the first time, it came out all blotchy.  The color remover, it seems, removed only the top layer of dye - the dress was back to being blotchy purple again.  Sigh. 

So I bleached the crap out of it, hoping that it wouldn't ruin the fabric.  Thankfully, it didn't.   Here it is wet: 

And dry, the bleaching process finished: 

I now have a very pale lavender dress, with yellow tapestry sleeve linings.  Also, all of the buttonholes remained the same color, because I used polyester thread, which didn't bleach.   o_0   The fabric is actually quite a lovely lavender, and it actually looks good on me - and I'd keep it, if the color were remotely even, but it's really, really not.  

I'll be dyeing the dress again tonight.  Wish me luck. 

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