DIY Wedding: A Pink Crinoline!

I wasn't a bridezilla, I really wasn't, but when I was engaged (four years ago), I found myself more and more outraged with the price of wedding stuff.  Slap the word "bridal" on something and expect a 70% increase. It boiled me. So for my wedding, I DIY'ed a lot...

While browsing Etsy this evening, I revisited my bridal rage for a moment when I discovered that sellers are charging upwards of $100 for dyed crinolines. OMG. I almost had a heart attack. I dyed my own crinoline (and a few others) for my wedding. I wore a pink one that my sister wore a year later when she got married...It cost me less than $2 to dye it.  I think that I even bought the actual crinnie on ebay for like $10. So, you can understand my outrage. It also took me all of 45 minutes. I'm in the wrong business. I need to start selling this stuff...

How to Dye a Crinoline (or anything really...)

An important site for dyeing info is the RIT DYE SITE...there is a color chart that will help you make custom colors, should you want them...

To start, I filled my washer with hot hot water, then I put on gloves (you don't want pink hands do you?).  BEFORE I put the dye in the wash bin, I dunked the crinoline into the water. Since I didn't have anywhere else for the wet crinoline to go, I put a towel under a laundry basket so that water wouldn't get all over and I put the wet crinoline in the basket.

Here is my set up...

I then added the dye (RIT liquid dye, Rose Pink) to the wash bin and set it to agitate, then I added the crinoline to the dye and dunked it in as much as I could (this is where wearing gloves comes in really handy, because that water was HOT).

Here's the crinoline right before I shut the washer lid to let it agitate.

I kept setting the washer to agitate, I let it go for about 15 minutes, then I took it out, unraveled it the best that I could (it was heavy...) then I put it back in for another 15 minutes. This step is really important because if you don't unravel it, your crinnie will end up tye-dyed.

A mid-cycle pic...

After it was done agitating I let it rinse twice, the 2nd time, I added just a bit of detergent, rinsed it again, let the water drain and I took it out.

Here it is right before I took it out of the washer...

I hung it up in my bathroom the best that I could...it was REALLY tangled within itself and I had to have the husband (then the fiance) help me...

It turned out pretty well. I think the color on the bottle very accurately describes the color that the crinoline turned out to be. I was surprised by that actually.

Here are pictures of my former crinnie and hoop skirt that I had also dyed. I was trying to match the color "truffle," which was the color of my bridesmaid dresses...it took a lot of work, four things of rit dye, but it was successful.  I freaked out at first because it was REALLY purple.  I looked on the rit site and saw that you could make burgundy out of 1/2 cup dark brown and 1 cup of wine, I switched that up and it ended up really purple, so I used two more packs of dark brown and voila! Perfection!

Up close color of crinnie #1

Here's the hoop skirt and crinnie together...

The crinoline looks tie dyed in this picture, which to be honest, it sort of was up top, the fabric for this crinnie was different from the one that I actually wore. 

Out of thousands of wedding pictures, this is the only one that I can find with a good view under my dress...Which is a good thing I think?