Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Simple Shirt Refashion - Dye and Gathers

I hope you all are having a wonderful week so far. My sister is in town from out of state and we had a big(ish) family dinner on Sunday with my parents and all their posterity. There's not a huge number of us yet, but the cousins had a great time playing together so there was a lot of commotion. It feels so good to be living near my family again.

I recently completed another shirt refashion from my stash. This is a shirt I picked up during my Macy's clearance rack raid I talked about in this post.

IMG_6031.jpg


I loved the square neckline and embroidery, but not the white, especially with small children who love to grab me with messy hands. Also the flutter sleeves were not very flattering.

So I dyed it using Rit dye in purple. I used the stove top method, which was rather tiring because I had to stand there and stir the entire time (nearly 30 minutes). The shirt itself is cotton, so it took the dye well, but the embroidery and the thread used to sew the shirt together is synthetic so it did not take the dye at all. That was okay with me since I did want to keep the contrast of the embroidery.

Then, using elastic thread, I sewed all around the edge of the sleeve to make it a puff sleeve instead of a flutter sleeve. I thought I'd share a tip for using the elastic thread: tie it off so it doesn't pull out. [This may totally be a given that everyone knows already, but I haven't seen anyone else say it, so I thought I would just in case.]

Leave the beginning and end tails of the thread long (at least a few inches) so it's easier to work with.

IMG_6714.jpg


Using a needle, bring the regular thread through to the side with the elastic thread.

IMG_6715.jpg


Tie in a knot several times and trim excess short.

IMG_6716.jpg


And now I have a shirt in my favorite color! Yay for purple!

IMG_6720.jpg


Have any of you used dye for your projects?

5 comments:

  1. So pretty! It's funny because the flutter sleeve is so much better on my arms than a gathered one. Love the new color! Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm stopping by from I heart naptime link party. I love this color. I've never been brave enough to do any dye related projects including my hair), but you really made this one work! I'm surprised that the trim turned out so good. Well done!

    ReplyDelete
  3. The top looks beautiful. Love the color.

    We have a link-up party going on - Tea Time Thursdays @ Kreative Korner. I would really appreciate if you'd link up some of your awesome posts there. Hope to see you at the party.

    http://tanyaanurag.blogspot.com/2011/08/tea-time-thursdays-4.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. Super cute :) I had to comment because I just dyed my wedding dress! I used the RIT cabernet/wine dye, but the dress came out pink, since it's synthetic. The stitching however came out very dark (opposite of yours). I'm planning on using it for Halloween, so I wasn't too worried about how it came out -_^

    ReplyDelete

I love to read your comments, thank you for taking the time to visit my little corner of the world!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...