How I Ice Dyed a Wedding Dress

Yes, you read that right. I ice dyed a wedding dress! Was it scary? Absolutely! Was it worth it? 100%

Ann loved the idea of adding some colour to her wedding dress in an unexpected way but didn’t really want a print. She liked the idea of colour being added in a more organic way. I did some research and started with testing out a few different dying techniques. At this time I had some experience with dip dying but not much more. After a few attempts we decided the ice dying technique was the look we were going for. Basically ice dying involves scrunching up your wet fabric, covering it with ice and sprinkling powder dye on top and then waiting for the ice to melt. You pretty much go in with the mentality of ‘you get what you get and your don’t get upset’ which is hard to do when you are entrusted with making someone’s wedding dress. But I trusted the process and happy to say it came out even better than expected.

Think you might want to try ice dying? Here is a look at how I did it. Scroll to the end to see the finished product!

How to Ice Dye

1: Gather your supplies. You will need a lot of ice, a wire rack, a dish for the ice and dye to melt into, something to protect your work surface, a spoon and powder dye. I used Rit All Purpose powder dye in royal blue.

2: Get the fabric wet, scrunch it up into a small flat mound and place it on your wire rack. Then cover it with lots of ice.

3: Use a spoon to sprinkle the powdered dye over the ice. The more dye you use the darker the results will be. We still wanted a lot of white in the background so I didn’t use a lot of dye.

4: Now you sit around and watch ice melt. Or you could move on with your life, do something else and check back later. Let the ice fully melt so the dye makes it all the way through the fabric. You can see how much darker the colour gets with just a little bit of dye. Once the ice has melted your will want to spray it with the Rit ColourStay Dye Fixative to help set the dye and prevent bleeding.

5: Ok, here is the part where you are going to think I’ve lost my mind. We need to need to microwave the fabric. Yep, that’s right, we are microwaving fabric. Wrap it up in plastic (I used a plastic bag) and microwave for 2 minutes.

6: Once the fabric has cooled slightly take it out of the plastic and rinse it under cold water until the water runs clear. This prevents the dye from bleeding into any white areas. Wash the fabric in cold water with a mild detergent, rinse, dry and hope your client loves how it turned out. Spoiler, she did love it!