Hooray for Bridesmaids!: Part II (Dying Sashes)

     My bridesmaids will be wearing "conac" (copper) colored dresses as mentioned in a previous post. (See Hooray for Bridesmaids!) Each girl will have a different colored flower that they will be carrying down the aisle. To match the flowers, each will also have a sash in her color and they will be wearing black converse shoes with laces in their color. This post is about how I made the sashes. :)
     After playing around in fabric stores browsing various fabrics, I decided to go with a 10% polymesh fabric. It was awesome because it lays really well and doesn't have to be hemmed because no one will be able to tell anyway! I found a sash in the perfect blue and another in the perfect green shade. I found a baby pink (not what I wanted!) and white. And that...was...it! I searched high and low for yellow, orange, the right pink, and purple, but alas...none was to be found. Not online. Not in any of the fabric stores I picked through. (including a trip to the metroplex that yielded no properly colored polymesh!) 
       Then it hit me...and I'm not sure why it didn't hit me sooner...why not just dye them? My future mother-in-law and I headed back to Hancock Fabric and bought four 1/4ft pieces of white polymesh. Later on, I lost a bridesmaid, so I only ended up dying 3 of them. (Long story, but don't worry...no one's feelings were hurt! It was just a dress mix up that ended with being short a dress b/c David's Bridal stopped carrying the style/color.)

     So, after putting it off for awhile, I finally got motivated to dye the sashes. (Thanks Airicca!:p) To my dismay, the Rit dye required not just letting the sash sit in the dye, but also constant stirring...for 30-60 minutes!?!!!! So I naturally did what anyone would do...I hooked my laptop up in the kitchen and turned on a Harry Potter movie to pass the time. (The Chamber of Secrets for those wondering...) I worked pink first. After 45 minutes, the dye was setting anything brighter than a baby pink. I decreased the water and increased the dye. Still no luck after 15 more minutes. I decreased the water and added the last of the dye. I also heated the water over the stove to help. It got a little darker...but that was it. :( A little sad, I rinsed out the pot and the sash...to reveal a baby...like terrified of bright colors baby pink.

     Then I tried Plan B...which it turns out should have been Plan A. I used the same dye that was used to dye my wedding dress tie. (Blog post about that one coming soon!) Voila! Worked beautifully!...and in a quarter of the time! It's a spray dye, so I laid down some plastic trash bags and sprayed the mesh. I had to sort of "rub the color in" to make the color smooth and consistent. I hung the sash on some hangers to air dry while I dyed the other sashes. Once they dried, I heat set them in the dryer and life was good. :)