Dyeing a Vintage Polyester Wedding Dress

A step by step tutorial on how I made my steampunk outfit

Part I

 
Wander around the DI looking for costume inspiration. Find a ridiculous vintage wedding dress for only $15.

Amazing! You couldn't buy this much material for $15.

Spend half an hour in the dressing room imagining the possibilities.

Smile and nod at the elderly couple in line who keep gushing about how gorgeous you'll look on your wedding day. Take home to the boyfriend. Make him freak out about your dress sense and rethink his life.

Spend about a week researching how to dye polyester and how terrible it is. Colors hardly take and you need special dye, extra time, and hot hot boiling hot water. (There is no way that much fabric is fitting on any stove top). Also, when dyeing you need to agitate the fabric the entire time if you want a smooth dye, otherwise the crevices will be darker like a tie-dye.

Decide to dye it burgandy. Realize it might not take and could end up pink. Buy green and black packets.

Wet dress in an old tub in the shower. Momentarily freak out because you totally forgot to rinse out the tub and the white dress now has dirt on it. Shrug, because it's only a costume and pull out of the water.

Spend half an hour researching what ratios to use with green and black.

Shrug and dump the entire contents of both packets into the tub full of hot water from the shower. Supplement with a full pot of boiling water.

Freak out a little before putting the dress in. Imagine if it was something you actually cared about. Dump it in, and shove it under the water. Keep shoving. It's a lot of fabric.

Get excited because it's totally gonna look amazing!

Let sit for one hour as per instructions, stirring diligently the ENTIRE TIME.

Realize it's only 10 minutes later. Half an hour will be fine, right? And it can totally sit without moving for a while at a time.

15 minutes in, supplement with another pot of boiling water, just in case. Extend your mental timer to 45 minutes.

25 minutes in, realize that your rubber gloves are SO NOT WATERPROOF, and you've pretty much been soaking your hand in dye.

Spend a few minutes letting it sit, scrubbing your hands like mad.

Stir the dress with your handy-dandy stirring stick, bought expressly for this purpose! (99 cent dowel from craft store)

30 minutes in, the weight of the dress snaps your handy-dandy stirring stick.

35 minutes in, with no real way to agitate the fabric, decide it's been long enough.

Consider ghetto wrapping your hands in grocery bags to take the dress out. Attempt. Figure your hands were pretty much fine the first 20 minutes, as long as you don't dip them directly in the dye they should be fine.

Dump out tub into the bathtub. Wait for the black murk to drain. Attempt to rinse out the yards and yards of dress while keeping both your hands and the dress out of the dye water. This does not go easily.

Eventually throw on some old flats, put the dress on two hangers, and jump in the tub. Turn on the shower to rinse the dress until the water runs clear (...as near as you can tell).

Apologize to your roommate. The green will totally come out of the tub, you promise!

Hang dress to dry overnight.

Spend another 45 minutes or so scrubbing the bathtub (Comet is amazing!)

Geek out because it turned out fantastic!

Spend the night hoping the dye will take after washing. Throw in regular wash cycle with some laundry soap.

Dance around the room excitedly because it TOTALLY WORKED!

The beading ended up darkest, while the threads in the applique lightened with a bluish hue contrasting with the sage dress. Celebrate around the room some more!

Tips, In All Seriousness

• Know what kind of fabric you are dyeing. iDye was exactly what I needed, but don't mistakenly use cotton for polyester or vice versa. If you think you might have a blend, iDye makes color pairings in both cotton and polyester - mixing the two gives the best results. If you're unsure like me, there's a fabric burn test you can do.  
• I chose to only use polyester dye because I was hoping for some contrast, and while I guessed/hoped what it might look like, I had NO real idea. Keep an open mind. While researching this, the people I found most disappointed were the ones who had set ideas on the exact color or look they wanted when they weren't really sure what they were doing.
• That being said, you can do it! I'd never dyed anything before, let alone polyester which the internet agrees is difficult. Prepare ahead of time, use gloves that will not leak (ha ha) and get as much ventilation as possible. I had a killer headache the next day and I'm pretty sure it's because my bathroom didn't have enough airflow. If I were to do it again, I'd at least use an extra fan.
• Make sure the fabric AND the container you're dyeing in are clean (whoops). There are a few slight discolorations on my dress from dirt, so heads up.
• Rinse rinse rinse, and wash wash wash! I did get not all the dye out of my dress, as I found out the next time I wore it and my hands turned green (I was holding the skirt up out of the way). I don't know if it's because I hung it up to dry instead of using the dryer, or if I didn't rinse well enough, but it's going to need washing again. The good news is it didn't affect the dress, just my hands.
• Have fun, and get creative!