Tie dye

I was looking gloomily at a VERY boring white silk tutu – interesting design, sure, but executed all in white it turned into a big fluffy nightgown. I was trying to figure out how to embellish it and give it some shape and/or color interest while keeping the design lines, and drawing blank after blank.

Finally I reverted to my college days and remembered that white can mean only ONE thing…tie dye!

So, rather than taking a high-risk path and trying to dye a spiral or something (which I know how to do…but one screwup will mess up the entire thing, and I don’t have spare tutus on hand in case I mess one up), I decided to scrunch-dye it. It’s pretty simple. You soak it in a 50-50 water-vinegar solution, then scrunch it up into lots of tiny little rumples – the smaller and more irregular, the better. Then you drip dye on it with a syringe, in different colors. It works best if the colors blend well, because they will flow into each other whether you like it or not. In the end you get a bazillion shades of all the colors you mixed, plus a pleasant rumpled pattern from the dye. Normally I do it in flame colors but this time I decided to do it in blues and purples – not sure why, bright orange/red/gold might have been more apropos to the Ride. But blue and purple it is.

I started by baking it in the oven to “set” the dye, but lost patience after an hour or so and stuck it in the microwave. Three minutes in the microwave brought it nicely up to temperature, then I rinsed it out with water and have hung it to dry in the shower stall. Tomorrow I’ll find out whether it was an act of brilliance or a complete disaster….