... as in Iowa. That's pretty far from here, and three months ago seems like forever! Anyway, I'm always ruining my black clothes, especially my favorite t-shirts that I wear all the time. I don't know why, but this time it was two of them in as many days, both with bleach in a cleaner I was using. (That should teach me to use bleach products!)
The shirt on the left has small dots of bleach, the one on the right is fairly obvious and I decided to throw in my favorite black capris while I was at it.
Here's a close-up at the shirt on the left:
So I bought some Rit Dye in black. And waited approximately three months to run my experiment. Be sure you do that too--it's an essential part of the process. Wait, so is reading through to the end to see the outcome before deciding if you even want to do this!
I read the directions and followed them very carefully, mixing everything in a an old laundry detergent bucket I found in our apartment.
After soaking and swishing and stirring for the allotted time, I rinsed everything in hot and then cool water, then took the newly-darkened items down to the laundry room. (There are directions for dyeing directly in a washer, but since a whole dorm uses them, I decided not to risk it.)
So how did it go once the clothes were washed and dried? See for yourself.
Yeah, major bummer, dude! I tried to replicate the photo-shoot so the results wouldn't be skewed, but you really can't tell I did anything. The shirt with the little bleach spots is the same, the capri pants might look a little less warn--like the color is more even in the knees, but I'm not sure about that. The other black shirt seems to have darkened a little in the bleached area, but really, it's still obviously bleached!
So there you have it. Totally not worth my time and effort, but now I know. I decided I could wear the shirt with small bleach dots on days that it doesn't matter. Capri weather will be over soon, but I don't know how to rescue the other shirt. I've seen fun bleach-pen designs on Pinterest--do you think that would work? Or I could get creative with the cutting and patching and sewing after we get our stuff out of storage. Who knows!
Have you dyed anything before? Any failures you care to share? Am I the only one who accidentally bleaches stuff? Please tell me I'm not!
Not that I've dyed anything myself, but I'm really surprised that didn't work! Total bummer.
ReplyDeleteSide note: stupid me didn't realize the toilet bowl cleaner I was using had bleach in it until I noticed some bleach splatter on my work pants. That'll the me to ever clean the toilets again :)
You should definitely do a bleach pen design on those shirts though. :)