Dyeing French Veil

I want to share with you how you can custom dye French veil. I just received an email from a friend who wants me to design a custom fascinator for her son’s wedding. As soon as I see her dress and pick up a paint swatch at the hardware store, yes I did say hardware store, then I can see if I need to dye feathers, French veil and French gimp braid. The idea of a paint swatch came to me when I began taking custom orders from other States and I was given a color to make the piece. I explained there are so many shades of any color that it is impossible to match something without a true idea of the correct shade. It was then that I hit upon the idea that my customers can take the garment they intend wearing to the nearest hardware store and then mail me a paint swatch. It works like charm.

If you read my blogs on dyeing feathers, then you know I came up with a jar dyeing system to dye my feathers. I decided to try dyeing white French veil but believe it will only be affective with deeper colors. I cut a length of white French veil in half, long enough to make a veil circle for a fascinator and folded it up in a small ball and pushed it into my jar filled with wine colored dye. I pushed it around with a fork until it was saturated and had stayed for a couple of minutes in the hot dye water. Although it looks very pink in this photo, I can assure you it is not. It is the light above my stove that changed the color pinker than it is.

I also cut a length of white braid that would work around my fascinator base and dunked it into the jar. I was quite thrilled with the outcome because now I don’t have to stock lots of colors and I always keep black and white on hand. Here it is drying on paper towel after I blotted the braid with more paper towel.

Don’t worry about the French veil being wrinkled.

When dry simply iron both pieces.

I hope this blog helps you if you don’t have a lot of money and supplies. For me money is always important and I can’t afford to keep everything in stock that I would like. Now I have a way to color coordinate without worry and you do too.

Tags: dye, french veil, techniques