A couple of years ago I happened upon this awesome tutorial for layering a short sleeve t-shirt (with holes or stains) over a long sleeve one and doing reverse appliqué on it, cutting out the ruined parts of the top shirt. The effect is pretty much the same as the Alabama Chanin style however, instead of using fabric paint on the cut fabric edges, dabbing on pure bleach changes the color. I just love this effect.
I had this very blah lavendar t-shirt with a couple of stains on the front and a dark purple long sleeved t-shirt that I'd thrifted a couple of years ago. I'd put them aside I can't even remember how many months ago intending to try this technique out with them, but never got around to it until the current Me-Made-May. The weather where I live has been unusually chilly and rainy and I've been finding that I don't have many me-made clothing for this in-between season. So I finally got my butt in gear and did this project!
I cut out some leaf shapes and played around with them until they positioned how I liked them and covering the stains. I then traced around them, cut out the shapes and dabbed on the bleach. The bleach got rinsed out and the shirt hung out to dry until the next day. I accidentally splattered a bit of bleach on the front of the shirt, so I purposely splattered more to make it look intentional!
Next step was embroidering the edges. I decided to do it with embroidery thread by hand. I usually don't like to hand-sew, but I took the project outside on a nice afternoon while my kids played and actually found it quite relaxing to work on it slowly by hand.
Here's a close-up of the stitching. I love this effect!
The stitching keeps the two shirts together nicely. This combo is much more interesting than the original shirts! I was thinking of cutting off the collar and sleeve and bottom hems of the top t-shirt so that they would roll up a little bit, but in the end decided not to because I wasn't sure if it would look good or ruin the whole thing. What do you think?
More information can be found on this project at Cucicucicoo.com, along with lots of refashioning tutorials!
8 comments:
Sing it! I used the same tutorial a while back, but I did not do the bleach step. I ran two or three lines of stitching round my leaf shapes as well as one at the neckline.
IWOM: EOD
That looks fabulous! Love it!
LOVE IT!!! Thanks for the good instructions, I want to try this!
IWOM: isn't that bleach idea great? I wish I could say that it was my own idea, but it wasn't! (link to original tute in post)
Jennifer & Clare: Thanks so much! Clare, if you try it, let me know. I'd love to see it!
This is adorable! What a great idea!
Happy highways,
Kelley~
So glad you like it, Kelley!
Splattering more is always my go-to for covering up splatter mistakes too! I love the look of the bleach and the stitching.
Lanky, that makes me feel better that I'm not the only one who makes mistakes like that! :) Lisa
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