Dying Queen, Young and Sweet, Only Twentyyyy

I died my own crinoline! In all, I think it turned out great, I honostly have no idea why I've been fretting about this the past couple of days. Oh well, its over with now. Heres the finished product.

It came out so bright, I'm so excited to wear it. I know it will look even better in natural sunlight and photographed by the pros. I was actually really nervous doing this though. I thought for sure I was going to end up with a tie dyed mess.

As I let the washer fill up with hot water and very little detergent I made the dye bath mixture of two cups hot water and one box of dye. I then added it to the washer and let it agitate for about ten minutes. White it was sitting I soaked my crinoline in the shower with hot water. After that I just added it to the washer and ran it through one wash cycle.

To take the crinoline out of the washer I put three old towels down on the floor of our laundry room (its tile). I then would set the entire crinoline down on that to straighten it back out and unwind it. I tried to just do it in the air but it was so heavy and water was getting everywhere, ha.

I ran it through two more wash cycles with the dye before one more normal wash. All the while removing it from the washer every so often. To dry I just hung it up in the washroom off the door.

Pretty blue water :)

The bottom even picked up the light blue, I was kind of hoping this would stay white though, oh well.

The whole thing was pretty easy. If I had to do it again I would take it out of the washer more. I let it run through one whole wash cycle before I took it out to untangle it and the top was pretty light compared to the bottom. Thats why I had to run it through the wash cycle two more times- to get it to even out and be dark enough, so that sucked. Other than that it was a piece of cake!

Crinoline Inspiration

I decided I needed to search for blue crinolines that other brides had dyed to see their results. I found this picture, which is exactly what I want!



The blue is so bright and perfect! I couldn't find out who this was/where it came from though so I didn't know which shade she used.


I ended up buying a box of royal blue rit dye and testing it out on another washcloth. I then re-dyed the evening blue washcloth with more powder since it originally looked like light baby blue. When the two came out, they looked almost exactly the same. In general, they both looked pretty good. They were both bright blue and there wasn't any tie-dyed spots. I think the color will come out on the crinoline a little different since their different materials but thats okay. Now that I've realized they're both great colors I'm just going to dye it evening blue since I have an extra box of that. I don't know why I was freaking out about this so much! ha


More Inspiration photos:

Unsure who I stole it from-Evening Blue




Knottie tjh186-Royal Blue

Knottie kreeves72-Evening Blue

I plan on dying mine this weekend, I'll let you know how it goes!

To dye or not to dye?

I've been so busy lately and have had no time to write a real blog entry. My mom, stepdad and brother came into town for the week of Thanksgiving. We didn't do to much while they were here. We went bowling one night, did the Budweiser brewery tour another and some shopping. We did drive down to Denver the night before Thanksgiving to pick up my dress though. Little did we know that they were going to be running on holiday hours so when we arrived at 5:04pm we soon found out they closed at 5:00 that night. I was so upset because I really wanted my mom to see me in my dress before the wedding and she was leaving early the day after Thanksgiving so now she couldn't. I ended up going back down by myself and getting it the day after Thanksgiving so now my dress is hanging in my closet! It's sooo official now and I can not express how happy I am! When I picked up my dress I also bought a crinoline too :)

Now that I own my crinoline, I just have to figure out what color to dye it. I have been debating between yellow and blue for weeks now! I really wanted to wear yellow shoes under my dress to spice it up, meaning I would want a yellow crinoline to match. After thinking about it, although I really want to wear yellow shoes I highly doubt I will. I HATE shoes. In the winter I wear flip flops because I can not stand shoes. I know I will end up taking them off right after the ceremony, therefore they would just be a waste. Having no reason to dye the crinoline yellow I was thinking then I could die it blue and have it be my something blue.

I went to the store and bought a box of Evening Blue. This color looked perfect in the swatch below. If I'm going to use blue I want it to be nice and bright which I thought was a dead on match for the shade in the picture! Well after I dyed a washcloth this color I found that this is just a light sky blue, not what I wanted. Since I wasn't sure how much dye to put in the wash for just one washcloth I kept adding more but I still wasn't getting the results I wanted.

My two other choices to dye my crinoline are Yellow and Royal Blue. Neither look anything like how I was imagining my crinoline though. I know these are just pictures but the yellow looks way to bright and the Royal Blue looks very deep. I'm debating if I should even dye it at all now. I really do not want to mess this up and will hate it if its a nasty color, I'm way to picky. I think I'm going to have to go and buy both the royal blue and yellow and do more experimenting.

Anyone else dying theirs? If you've already one it, any tips?

Blogging Bride Part II

Last Tuesday, Masterpiece Weddings-Adventures in Wedding Planning posted the second piece on me. Its a short story about a stressor I've been having, also which I've been waiting to blog about. If you read the story you'll know I'm changing my date to June of 2009 so one of my bridesmaids can remain in the wedding. If I don't, she'll be studying abroad in New Zealand and not at the wedding, so a date change is a must. I called Julie, the coordinator at my venue, today and left her a message to call me back so we can discuss a date change. If all goes as planned, I will be a June 2009 bride!