I'm starting a ruthless culling of clothes from my closet that I don't
wear. But first, I'm going to see if I can salvage them. I'm pretty thrilled
with the results of my first attempt!
The "before" is this lime green top - I've acquired many of my clothes
by random methods, but this I actually bought new (not a thrift store)
myself (not a gift) many years ago. Not sure why I ever liked the
color.
I didn't have any fabric dye lying around, so I thought I'd get
creative. First, I tried watered down acrylic paint. Too late I
realized that my paint was pretty old, so it didn't mix well with
water. I ended up with painty spots on parts of the shirt, and
nothing on the other. Luckily, most of it rinsed out.
Then I tried food coloring. Mostly because I have a huge bottle of it
in the kitchen. Turns out, it doesn't stain fabric at all. So, night
one ended in failure. A really messy bathroom and a drippy, paint
stained shirt hanging in the shower.
Next day I bit the bullet and actually bought a bottle of RIT dye.
Had I known it would cost less than $3, I probably would have started
here first :)
There are two methods - one which tells you to add salt and one which
tells you to add vinegar depending upon what type of fabric you have.
I had torn out the itchy tag years ago, so just guessed it might be
rayon and added salt. The result:
I liked how it turned out so much, I threw another lime green item (I
have no idea why I had two VERY similar tops) in the dye. This still
had the tag on it which said it was silk, so I added vinegar to the
remaining dye (yes it already had salt in it, but I figured it
couldn't matter that much).
And the result:
I love that they both started out the same color and even though I used the same dye (denim blue) on each, they came out so different. I've already worn them both, so I count it as a success!
