White Shirts Meet Rit Dye Formulas
The Dress Doctors long held that white blouses were not the most flattering choice save for the select few with perfect complexions. Instead, they counseled their students to select from the many tints or pastels to choose something more flattering. From what they wrote, seeking out such alternatives was not that hard at the time. But the garment industry today seems to insist we must all wear white--maybe it is simply easier for them to make essentially one color?--and most of what is offered in solid blouses are whites.
I inherited this lot of white blouses and decided to experiment. I used formulas found at the Rit Dye website and then added a wee bit more or less based on what I saw going on in the hot water in my top-loading washing machine. The results were very good. The pale peach cotton on the left turned out perfectly and the mother-of-pearl buttons took on the color too. The linen blouse on the right in terra cotta is now my warm autumn weekend shirt worn with khaki, or espresso. Notice that the thread, being polyester, remained white on the top-stitching. The coral cotton shirt in the back bleached a bit too easily while drying in the sun, so it may be I did not keep it in the washer long enough?
Do you have something white or pale in a natural fabric that doesn't work for you? Could you live with the thread staying the same color after dyeing? More than once I have saved a garment I never wear via dye, so now I always ponder the possibilities of dyes before I give away or throw away.
The Rit website has an enormous amount of useful information here: https://www.ritdye.com/
