Part of my plans for the wedding include re-purposing my original dress. The skirt is something like 4 yards of material, perfect for a simple dress, which is all I want nowadays. I thought I’d look good in a sapphire blue.

So, obviously, I needed to find a dyer (and a seamstress, but that was pretty easy) which is somewhat esoteric, but not outrageous. Right?

A little work online and I had a good recommendation for a place in, of all places, Ashland, OR! I figured I’d bring the fabric with me when we visit at the end of Sept, she’d do the syeing while I’m there for a week, and I’d bring it back. I’d even be able to see the color and make sure its what I want. How perfect is that? Too perfect, in the sense that its impossible, as it turns out. She doesn’t dye silk.

She did, however, recommend two places. One in Alberta Canada, and the other in San Francisco.

SF was too perfect for words — my mom could even be involved and do color verification for me. More positively, she (the dyer) uses a system that exactly matches color to the Pantone  palette. This guarantees the color will be what I choose. WOW!!!! So I wrote to her, and then started to look at Pantone colors labeled ‘blue’. To be sure I was choosing good colors, I made up a palette sheet, carefully labeled, and had it printed with absolute color accuracy st the local FedEx Office. Then I realized a few weeks had gone by and I hadn’t had a response. So I looked through the website a bit more and found an alterative email, and wrote again. A week later, I looked up the domain administrator and attempted to get a message to the dyer *that* way. Still no response.

I really didn’t want to work with people in Canada — shipping alone would be ruinous. So I went looking again.

A well-regarded place in New York City with a prestigious clientele didn’t return my email. Another dyer in the Midwest also didn’t return my email.

By now it’d been more than a month since I started looking for a dyer. One last place to try . . . the website looked good, and they send free color swatches . . . ok.  No email address, just a phone number. So I tried it.

SUCCESS!!!!

Intimate Dyeing Service is in Concord, NH, which is a bit of a pain. If I choose one of their ‘usual’ colors (they have a royal blue that might be perfect) they guarantee the color will match. If I give them a custom color (a swatch of some sort) they will do a ‘lab dip’ and send it to me for verifiication (it’ll cost $20, but that seems reasonable). They specialize in batches of color up to 10 yards.  Woo hooo!!!!

Oh, here’s a pdf of some photos of me in the dress, just for fun.

original wedding dress photos