When I discovered the concept of dyed crinolines I knew that one of my many friends getting married this Summer had to do it. This seems to be the official
knottie bio on the subject.
Mrs. Strawberry talked about it, and
Mrs. Poppy was even brave enough to do it and
wear it under her dress. My old roommate happened to be the perfect person to try this out with and so we adventurously purchased a crinoline off of ebay.
It took a few trips to Wal-Mart, but Amber finally discovered that the RIT dye is stocked next to the laundry detergent. Guess that makes sense. She was seeking a raspberry shade and so she bought the color Wine.
We had to take it out and make sure it fit. There was a small emergency at the beginning when we lost the string to tie it with (it disappeared into the skirt).
My crafty sister saved the day by looping the string back through with a safety pin. I don't totally understand how this works but she is brilliant like that.
Just follow the instructions on the back of the bottle. We ran hot water in the washer, and did not add salt (the instructions are kind of unclear about this). After the washer was full of hot water we added the entire bottle of dye. We then let the water agitate to mix the color around.
The instructions said we shouldn't put dry fabric in so we put the crinoline in the shower first to get it wet.
It was a monster effort to stuff that huge crinoline into our tiny washer. Poor Amber burned her hands a few times (the water has to be as hot as possible), but I think it was worth it in the end.
We pushed it down as far as it would go, and tried to spread it out around the middle of the washer. I opened the lid every 10 or 15 minutes to try to get different parts soaking underwater. After all of the water had drained out of the washer and it had run on the spin cycle for a few minutes we opened the lid to find this!
We rinsed it out with warm/hot water until the water ran as clear as possible.
The finished product hung to dry in my shower. I had to do a lot of scrubbing after she left, so remember that as the crinoline hangs it will drip colored water all over the place. I ran the washer 3 or 4 times with bleach (although that was probably overdoing it). I threw some white towels in to make sure that no residue was going to turn my panties pink the next time I washed my whites.
Amber just emailed me her bridals tonight, and so I was able to see how it looks underneath her dress. Doesn't she look beautiful?She said her photographer absolutely LOVED shooting the colored crinoline.
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