Message: Dear Paula,

I am trying to recreate a dress that was stolen from me and I need some help to do so. The dress had a tie-dye pattern, but it was a bit complex. The pattern was a few strips with white lines across. It was a tie dyed strip and the lines were bleached in.

It looks to me like a good way to do this would be in two steps. First, use the usual tie-dye recipe, with yellow, terra-cotta, and dark brown Procion MX dyes, on the dress, either untied or loosely tied. After washing out, wrap a string, such as dental floss or artificial sinew (my favorite) from the crafts store or dye seller, tightly around the dress, horizontally. Wrap the string extremely tightly. You can see the horizontal string marks in your picture; this is not bleach, but instead the dye-resisting effect of the string. Brush or squirt on a reddish brown Procion MX dye, using the usual tie-dye recipe. You will never get the exact same design, since tie-dyeing varies from piece to piece, but you can get a very similar look that you will love.

See these two pages for standard tie-dyeing instructions: How to Tie Dye and How to Dye.

Do not use all-purpose dyes such as Rit or Tintex, as their results will not be satisfactory. Procion MX dyes and other fiber reactive dyes are greatly superior. You will want to mail-order the specific dye colors of interest to you from a good dye supplier such as Dharma Trading Company or PRO Chemical & Dye; you should not expect to get a perfect color match, but instead be happy with similar colors. You will also need the other ingredients from a tie-dye kit, which you can order from your dye supplier, or, in many cases, find locally: soda ash (look for sodium carbonate at the hardware store in the pool supply section, or order with your dye), urea (order with your dye), water softener (sodium hexametaphosphate - order with your dye), plastic squirt bottles, disposable gloves, and a dust mask to wear when you're mixing up the dye powders.

You can sometimes find Jacquard Procion MX dye locally from a very good arts supply or crafts supply store, but this is unusual. Tie-dye kits work well (unless they are either Rit brand kits, or other brands of kits that are past their expiration date), but, since they contain the colors magenta, turquoise, and yellow, or sometimes red, blue, and yellow, they will not produce the colors you want at all easily. It's better to buy the colors you want, since you are a novice dyer. Buying by mail-order from a good supplier is cheaper and gives you far more dye color choices than you can find at most arts or crafts stores.

Do you have a white dress to dye? It will need to be made of a dyeable material, such as cotton, viscose rayon, or silk. Look at the blank dresses sold online by Dharma Trading Company if you need a source.

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