Coat

Last winter I bought myself a coat - I have lots of coats but I wanted something workmanlike for my walk to and from the office.   I have a waterproof and fleece combination which I tend to wear all the time, but that should really be for "proper" walking - given that the pockets are full of fleece gloves and poo bags!   I wasn't really sure about the coat - it's beige, a colour I normally wouldn't countenance.  However, it was in the sale and too good an offer to refuse really.   That said, it's been hanging up for a year now in my hallway and still had the labels inside - the shame!   To make me want to wear it and love it, some drastic action needed to be taken.  

That drastic action meant dying the coat - I bought a dark bottle green colour and 500g of salt - I'm still not really sure why I needed that, but the instructions were quite insistent.   If the coat had been 100 per cent cotton, then the colour would have come out as true as that shown on the box, but because it was a polycotton mix, the colour would come out lighter.  

It was quite a convoluted process.  Firstly, I had to wash the coat on a normal 40 degree cycle.   Then I had to dye the coat with the Dylon and salt on a 40 degree cotton cycle which took twice as long.  Once that was done, I had to wash the coat again with a washing tablet on another two hour cycle.  And when that was done, I could take the coat out of the machine and hang it up to dry.  I still had to run the machine again - this time empty with a normal 40 degree cycle, just to make sure there was no dye left in the machine to colour any other laundy I might be washing! 

I'm so thrilled with how the coat has turned out - it really was worth it.  And now I'm looking in my wardrobe and airing cupboard to see if there's anything else I can transform!