Tea-dyeing a blouse!

As you know from my review a few months ago, I recently bought a lovely blouse from Kids YoYo through Qutieland. Here's a stock picture - as you can see, it's a lovely off-white colour.

Unfortunately, when I received it, I found that it was actually a pure white colour - blindingly white. I know that pure white is a staple of the traditional Gothic Lolita wardrobe, but a Traditionalist I Am Not. After a lot of consideration and trepidation, I decided to tea-dye it.

I got my inspiration from this post I found on EGL. She dyed a white bodyline jumperskirt and it looked so much nicer afterwards.

I have tried tea-dyeing lace in the past with mixed results. I dyed a cotton lace and an elastic lace. The cotton one came out orange, and the elastic one came out pink. With my blouse, I used a much weaker tea so that it would be a better colour.

Here it is beforehand… whitey white.

Here it is during the process. I made a pot of really strong tea and then diluted it in a bucket of hot water. I added white vinegar as per the instructions, which is the setting agent. It smelled DELICIOUS (not).

Drying on the line. As you can see, it is a pretty nice antique-y colour, but I wouldn't call it off-white.

After it dried, I noticed that there were drip marks on the sleeves. I was so upset! Immediately I tried washing them out, but that sort of made the sleeves lighter than the rest. I put the whole thing in the washing machine, which I should've done before drying. It turned out much nicer.

After the whole process. Pretty good result! Now it's been through the wash maybe once more and it's an even nicer faded colour now. I'm happy because it's much more wearable than it was before.