Happy Monday! Hope you all had a fantastic weekend, including a most lovely Mother's Day! You got a little teaser of today's dress last week...
...and now you get to see how it turned out!
To be completely honest, it looks pretty good as is, however, the length is a bit off...
...and there were some not so pretty spots on the top portion. The ivory was slightly discolored. Definitely not something that I'd be able to wear as is.
I thought a bit of dye would do the trick to create a super cool color blocked dress!
I loved this mustard/black ensemble from Petra Karlsson's blog...
...so I decided to go this route on the color palette. I matched my dye (RIT's Sunshine Orange) and got to work!
I created a dye bath on the stove (boiled water, added salt, turned off the heat and added the dye), wet the top of the dress completely, and then added it into the bath.
I let the top of the dress sit in the bath for an hour to fully soak in the dye. Now a portion of the black skirt went into the dye as well, but I didn't think that would be a problem as just the top portion would take to the color.
Yeah, I was completely wrong about that. The black didn't take to the color, but some of the black ended up touching and bleeding onto the dress in the dye bath. It had an interesting tie dye-esque effect so I let it dry before trying to re-dye it a darker color. I immediately thought this was going to be an upcycle fail!
But alas, after it dried, I was kind of digging the look! It wasn't my original intention, but it might have turned out better than I had expected. I trimmed the skirt portion shorter, pinned it in place...
...and stitched a new hem before putting it on to wear.
Check out my unintentional after look...
Instead of taking it in, which would have made it completely fitted up top, I opted to use a vintage bamboo belt to cinch the waist. Plus it brought out the awesome mustardy-orange color that the top had become!
This is such a great lesson - even when things don't go the way you planned, there's always room to make adjustments to "make it work"! Accidental cuts, dye mishaps, or removing too much of a seam, just allow you to be open to a new creative route.
I really love this new look! I was told it had a slight Game of Thrones-esque vibe to it which couldn't have made me happier. Maybe I just look like a gal who needs a trio of dragons on her side.
Unplanned final look of a dress = new favorite mistake.
Have you guys had any of these "mistakes" pop up in your crafting/upcycling/DIY-ing/daily lives? Would love to hear stories of your crafting fouls and how you overcame them...or tried!!
