Bad tie dye dress saved?!

SO??? What do you think? Can I wear this out?

Last week when I made my pretty blue tie dye dress, I also blogged about the first, unattractive, ugly colored tie dye dress that was my first attempt. (blog post July 13) I was going to give it to my local thrift store or use it to wear around the house, but then my friend, Jonatha, gave me some suggestions on how I might fix it.

So, I what can I loose ...  Plus I am having fun tie dying.  My family better watch out come Christmas ... there might be a lot of tie dye gifts under the tree.

Anyway, she suggested I over dye the dress with red, which will make the grey parts turn burgundy and the beigy-pink parts turn red.  

This will remind you of how ugly this dress was.

Following my plan, I made large parallel stitches to gather up the fabric the same way I did the first tie dying.

Here is the dress just out of the dye bath, rinsed and ready to be opened up.

I made a plan, having learned the hard way things turn out better if you have a plan. I am going to over dye in red, but I'm going to over TIE DYE!

The top gets the same treatment. When all the tying is done I dye it, following directions on the box.

I'm pleased with the effect. Red is a good color choice for over dying this.

So, it's much improved. I could stop now, but it still looks muddy to me. It needs something else. Jonatha suggested adding black lines ... hmmmm.

There are so many cool products at the fabric store.  All kinds of fabric markers and dyes you can squirt on.  But, I have so much stuff in my studio.  These two bottles of paint are left over from the production of Antigone I designed a while back (I blogged about this on July 5th).  This is fabric paint that dries soft.  And this is what I used.

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I opened up the skirt on my work table and start adding highlights to the tie dye.

I used many short and quick strokes with a medium sized paint brush.

And do the same with the top. Cardboard needs to be put inside to keep the paint from bleeding through to the other side.

One last thing will make this dress look much more stylish and that is hemming the sleeves shorter.

So, thank you Jonatha for inspiring me to not give up on this dress!