A couple of years ago I bought DD a cute turquoise cotton sundress. At the time she was sharing an apartment with a young woman whose concept of cleaning was to pile her dirty socks next to the door and stash a month's worth of empty beer bottles in the coat closet; still, the girl cleaned the kitchen at least once. I know this because DD leaned against the counter in her new dress and the harsh cleaner left big white bleach spots all down the front of the skirt.
I couldn't bear to throw the dress away, so I stashed it in the closet determined to fix it. This last week DD and I rediscovered it, and I picked up a box of teal dye at Michael's (unfortunately they didn't have turquoise).
Obviously, the first thing I had to do was bleach the whole thing white so it would dye evenly. Ha! Easier said than done when the only bleach available is a cheap dollar store brand or an equally useless Aldi brand. Dear readers, it simply was not possible for these awful products to remove the color from the fabric. I started at one part bleach to four parts water, increased the concentration to 1:1, soaked the thing for thirty minutes and it was still bright blue. I finally gave up and moved on to the dye.
Next disappointment: look at that awful color! Even though it was supposed to be teal, and I was dyeing over turquoise, there's hardly any blue in the color at all. And even worse, the spots I hoped to get rid of are still visible. Ever the optimist, DD thinks it can be beautiful again, but this mom is skeptical.
