The cotton will need to be dyed with a different dye than the polyester. Neither fiber will take a dye that works on the other. A good dark black on each fabric should match well enough to look good, though. Navy blue and black are both good color choices for covering hot pink. Other options would be orange, red, maroon, purple, or dark brown.

Since cotton's easy to dye, think about the polyester dyeing first. The only kind of dye that will work on polyester is disperse dye. Dyeing polyester with disperse dye requires boiling it for an extended period of time; an hour would be good. Unlike cotton, polyester cannot be dyed in the washing machine. (I hope that boiling will not cause the cotton lining of your dress to shrink.)

You'll need to find a very large cooking pot for dyeing in, one you will not plan to ever reuse for food. If you want the polyester to be dyed the same color all over, your pot should be big enough that the dress moves in it freely and easily in the water when you stir it, with extra room at the top so that you don't splash the dye during your hour of constant stirring. If your pot is too small, parts of the polyester will dye lighter, and part darker, giving a sort of tie-dye effect, so the size of your pot really matters. The pot will be your biggest expense in this project, but it will be useful for other dyeing projects in the future. You should choose a pot that's made of either stainless steel or enamel, not aluminum; the least expensive alternative would be an enamel canning pot. You can buy a thirty-three quart (eight gallon) enamel canning pot for less than fifty dollars from Amazon, or you might be able to find it locally; in addition to kitchenware stores, sometimes hardware stores have them. (See "Why does everyone say never use an aluminium pot when dyeing?".) You'll also need a long-handled spoon to use to stir your dress as it dyes.

Disperse dye can be ordered in the US from several different suppliers. The easiest to find is Jacquard iDye Poly, which comes in eight different colors, including black. You can order it from any retailer of Jacquard Products, including Dharma Trading Company. Other good US sources for disperse dye include PRO Chemical & Dye in Massachusetts, with twelve different colors, and Aljo Mfg in New York, with twenty-two different colors of polyester dyes. Examine the recipe given by your dye supplier to see what other ingredients will be required.

For dyeing polyester a dark color, it's not enough to have disperse dye. You will also need a dye carrier chemical. This chemical is included in the Jacquard iDye Poly packet, and is sold separately as "PRO Dye Carrier NSC" by ProChem and as "Hi-Conc Developer" by Aljo. Without one of these dye carrier chemicals, the dye will not be able to reach its full color intensity. Unfortunately, this chemical smells horrible. Even if you open every window and door in your house, and have a fan on high in the window forcing good ventilation, the smell in the house can be quite unpleasant. I have not heard any report of anyone's becoming ill in any way from exposure to the carrier chemicals, but the safety data on the MSDS pages indicates that it's probably not a good idea to breathe much of any of them. Ideally you should either do your boiling outside, if you have a stove burner of some sort that you can use outside (I have one I obtained just for this purpose), or wear a cartridge respirator inside and ban everyone else (who's not also wearing a respirator) from your house until an hour or so after you have finished dyeing your polyester, so that you have a chance to air the house out. Note that a dust mask will provide no protection; you should use a cartridge respirator whose label indicates protection against organic vapors.

Compared to dyeing polyester, dyeing cotton is very easy. The easiest alternative for you would be to follow Jacquard Products' suggestion of adding iDye, which is a direct dye for cotton, to the same dyebath as your polyester dye, at the same time. Another alternative would be to use a fiber reactive dye such as Procion MX dye, since it lasts longer on clothing before fading than any direct dye. Procion MX dye is very easy to apply in a plastic bucket or the washing machine, since it doesn't require boiling; however, you can't apply it at the same time as disperse dye. There's a great appeal to the one-step convenience of applying iDye and iDye Poly at the same time.

Be sure to use enough dye, when dyeing a dark color. Weigh your dress, while it's dry, to see how much it weighs (if your kitchen scale and bathroom scale won't measure something of that weight, try a post office scale or a scale in the produce section of a grocery store). Check the instructions for the dye you choose and multiply it by the number of pounds of dry fabric you have, if necessary. Using too little dye for the weight of your fabric will result in a lighter color than you expect.

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