When Dresses Bleed

I never knew that when you purchase an article of clothing that has both black and white on it, you are playing a game (not the fun kind): the fabric dye might run or it might not. You might just wear the item 1-2 times and then after the first wash it is game over because the black has bled onto the white. Technically the dye should be set and not bleed so terribly, but it might, and that is all.

 

So this is what happened:

 

I bought a dress from The Limited on a mega sale… it was the only one, in my size, marked down, and it was mine. A pretty black and white dress, with a gold zipper down the back, and it was the perfect length. It was a S-C-O-R-E, since I am taller than 5 feet, to find a dress in my size with the proper length is a challenge. I saved it to wear on a special Sunday, and then I wore it to work. This pretty modest dress got many compliments, it was comfortable, and it became my favorite.

 

Then came the day that I wanted to wash it. I read the label… “machine wash cold with like colors and tumble dry low, dry clean for best results”. It was tempting to throw it in the wash and simply air dry it… but I wasn’t going to risk it. I threw it in the hamper, to save it for a trip to the dry cleaner, of course for best results. But there it sat, at the bottom of the hamper for one  three weeks. I decided that I would just compromise and gently hand wash this dress instead, at 10 o’clock at night…

 

(In retrospect: WHYyyyY, I should have just kept sipping on my tea, eating freshly baked cranberry bars, and reading my book instead.)

 

I turned on the cold water, and as I began to submerge the dress into the water, the black dye began to run right before my eyes, hitting staining the white stripes. I snatched it out of the water, I tried to stop the mean black dye from hitting anymore of my white stripes, but that was it, the perfectly white stripes were now gray, and blotchy. I tried to clean the stains with hydrogen peroxide… nothing… so then I tried rubbing alcohol… nope, so I just sprayed stain remover on the darker spots and let it just be. I turned to Google, and after reading through tips, I concluded that since my mom is 400 miles away, my next best bet for help would be the dry cleaner down the street. They open at 7 in the morning, so I’d stop by on my way to work.

 

In the morning the spots were lighter, YES! So off I went to the dry cleaner on my way to work. The nerd in me thought, I will take a before and after picture and write a fantastic review for this cleaner. Well… to make this long story shorter… the worker at the dry cleaner said that he couldn’t help me my dress me. The dress was probably ruined. No guarantees, actually he made it sound like there was a better guarantee that the dress would get even more ruined once it fully would get cleaned. So off I went, with my dress in hand. But it isn’t over yet….