Dyeing Dresses and Sand.

I return! Even though it's May and the water isn't anywhere near being warm enough to even walk in, I escaped to run in the sand as much as possible this weekend--even this morning, when it had rained and the sand was all damp--and to get as many smoothed shell pieces as possible. I was going to wait till tomorrow to make a post, but then it would just be too huge!

Pictured is the dress I wrote about the other day. I grabbed it at a local store, without even trying it on, just because it was so sweet. Sadly, it was quite badly stained all along the top to the waist! Since there was no time to get dry cleaned before we had to leave, and I doubted the stains would come out anyway, I tossed it in some tea and crossed my fingers that it would all match up and work! Eventually I'll get better pictures of it, but for now these will do.

This is the second time I've used tea to dye clothing (I used to toss paper in it all the time when I was a kid to make it look cool), and I take a terribly simple approach: Soak the garment in cold water for a few minutes--I get impatient so it usually only gets about five max--or soak it while you get the tea ready. I use the huge ice-tea bags you can get in the store, and I usually use about 3 of those for a large pot. Again, I'm impatient so once the tea is cooled down so I can touch it, the garment goes in! I left the dress for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, because I forgot about it, but it worked out fine. Stir it every now and then to make sure it's all even and such. Then I pulled it out, squeezed as much out as I could, and tossed it in the washer, with some chunky salt, on rinse. So far nothing has washed out, and it's the perfect faded tea color!

It turned out wonderfully, and I love it even more now. I wore it most of the day without the cardigan, but I think it's too perfect to show it not pictured at the beach. It's tiny, if I sneeze in it the world will come to an end, but as long as I mind my breath (it's not really that bad, I exaggerate) and don't eat too much it's all fine! I'll have to reinforce the zipper soon, but in the meantime I just love it.

Oh, how I miss the beach! It was so foggy you could barely see the ocean--the waves just came out of nowhere when the broke--so the pictures of just the beach up there are from this morning when it was dreary and rainy and there was no sun. My hair was all deliciously curled and perfect, but I defied all logic and went to the beach, and it all blew out in seconds! It was sort of amazing, how fast they all went away considering my hair holds a curl well normally. It is always worth it though, for minutes there!




(Stay off the dunes! I hate when people run and jump on them. Awful!)