Casey & Libby vs. The Dye

So I bought this dress when I was 18 at a little thrift store on the Outer Banks.

I bought it because it fit like a glove and the cut was (still is) really flattering. And it was $4 (this is a perfect post for Secondhand September, no?). I was less than thrilled with the print (it's dated, and too Laura Ashley), but I had visions of finding a tailor who could take the dress apart and use it as a pattern to make a version of it in navy or black.

Now, 7 years later, the dress still fits like a glove and I still love the cut, but the tailor hasn't materialized. My sister Libby mentioned that she was eager to try her hand at dyeing something, so she suggested we grab a bottle of Rit and go to town. I wasn't planning on wearing the dress as is, so why not experiment?

After reading how-to instructions online, along with several warnings about how dyeing clothing is MESSY and PERMANENT and HORRIFYING we set up camp in my mom's laundry room, promising to bleach the heck out of anything we splattered. Spoiler alert: If you use common sense, dyeing is easy-peasey and not as messy as the doomsday prophets at Rit would like you to think. So I don't have any shocking "OMG THE CARPET IS RUINED" stories or pictures.

Here we are, about halfway through the process:

That thing that looks like sludge is the dress. We used 1 bottle of black liquid Rit dye, 1 cup of salt, and 5 gallons of water (along with an old bucket, and my wooden spoon who offered up its life in the name of fashion and discovery). We stirred and stewed the dress around in the salty black water for 30 minutes, to make sure the dye took and was evenly distributed. As you can see, it was looking really dark and really promising.

After rinsing it till the water ran clear and then running it through the washer, here's what it looked like:
Yeah, pretty disappointing. It might look okay(ish) from far far away, but up close... it just looked muddy and drab. It sort of reminds me of something Little Orphan Annie might be forced to wear. My mom suggested that if we'd used a navy blue dye, it might have complemented the slightly visible blue pattern more than the black did. Of course, I had hoped that the pattern wouldn't show through at all, but I thought her point was valid.

Have any of you tried dyeing clothes before? Any ideas on what went wrong (maybe we didn't let it sit in the dye long enough, or rinse it in cold water long enough so the dye stuck)? Should we try dyeing it with another round of black dye?

Maybe I should find a tailor after all. If you have mad sewing skills and want to make a dress for me, let me know.