A Fashion Make-Under: Revamp of Old T-shirt and Jeans

After 22 weeks, fashion deprivation is starting to kick in…must stay strong…but seriously, I am not about to quit now.  My colleagues at work advised me that it would be OK to go to a friperie (used clothing store) but for someone like me, that’s like telling an alcoholic that it’s OK to have just a sip of wine.  A very slippery slope!  I have decided that I will get my creative fashion juices flowing on a project.  I had an old white t-shirt and my daughter’s reject jeans that I thought would be fun to “redo”.

I wanted a green t-shirt for Earth Day and I was planning to dye the t-shirt in April but I ran out of time.  I also wanted to paint and redecorate the jeans.  I saw in an Elle Quebec magazine a designer jean jacket that had been painted and thought that this would be something I could do.  With my usual high hopes, I embarked on the project.   The plan was to dye the t-shirt and part of the jeans green.  After dyeing the jeans, I planned to paint and decorate them.

I purchased a green fabric dye at Omer Desserres.   It’s not exactly a zero waste project because of the dye packaging but it is a reuse project.   The dyeing process was quite time consuming:  you had to stir the dye for 15 minutes and then stir occasionally for another 45 minutes. I read the instructions on the package and was a bit concerned.  Working in a safety conscious business, you cannot help but think about the consequences of working with dangerous chemicals.   My daughter told me that I looked like a witch stirring her brew:

The dye package indicated that the dye would work for cotton, rayon and silk.  The label on the t-shirt indicated that it was rayon although I had a doubt about the sleeves and flower, which looked like polyester.  As I was dyeing the t-shirt, my concerns began to increase.  The sleeves and flower were not becoming dyed.

Nor were the jeans.  My usual optimism was being replaced with reality.  The sleeves and flower were not being dyed.  That made me think about what kind of dyes it would take to dye polyester.  In watching the Netflix documentary The True Cost (an excellent documentary if you want to stop shopping), I recall seeing the deformed limbs of people exposed to the chemicals in the fashion industry. It provides yet another reason to avoid buying clothing made of synthetic fabrics.   The jeans did not actually seem to be dyed green at all.  It was clear that even painting the jeans was not going to help.  There was much hilarity in my family while displaying the outcome of my hard work:

I call this my fashion make-under because I was underwhelmed with the result.  I was disappointed and shared this with my husband.  My husband responded by chuckling, shaking his head and saying “We all expected that .”  My daughters laughed uproariously, as I did I (eventually) because there was nothing else left to do.  Even my garden was undergoing some challenges.  Something had attacked my broccoli plant and left the leaves:

Sometimes things just don’t work out in life.   But we have to keep going and keep smiling.  Or turn your jeans into marketing jeans:

Challenge for the Week:  Is there a reuse project that you want to try?  Or is there a reuse that you tried that worked out (or didn’t)?