Hello....
Before I get to this weeks project I want to say a big THANKS to plushbeds for including Upcycled Design Lab in their list of the top 25 upcycling blogs. You can read the article here.
In one of my other lives when I am not crafting or working on my Ebay Store, I am a waitress. It is not glamorous but it helps pay the bills and allows me the time to pursue my other interests. Most days it is a perfectly pleasant way to earn a living but inevitably there are those times when folks are rude or unkind and I do dream of a time when I will no longer need the income from this endeavor.
For now I accept that it is part of my portfolio, to put a ridiculously fancy name on what I do. :-) But the real truth is that without this humble career choice this weeks project would never have come about.
You see I found myself with some of my clean but completely stained white work shirts. They were yellowed from too many bleach washes and there were other stains that the bleach just couldn't remove. If you know anything about my crafting you know I like a challenge and the more trashy an item is the more rewarding it is if you can actually make something out of it. Well these are heavy weight oxford shirts so the fabric itself is still in good condition and since I still had the dye bath from last weeks project sitting in a pot I set out to re-fashion my unsightly old work shirts.
I started by cutting off the collar and sleeves.
Then I marked and cut off the bottom at a slightly dropped waist length.
Since I was planning to leave a lot of the raw edges I decided to add some more by slitting the front edge.
To make the pattern for the skirt I took the bottom measurement from the shirt and doubled it. I was planning on having 16 skirt piece so I took the doubled number and divided that by 16 and then added the seam allowance on both sides which gave me the top measurement for my pattern piece. I decided to make the length 17 inches and then I added 2 inches for the bottom measurement.
Then I started cutting up my second shirt.
But I knew I wasn't going to have enough fabric so I also cut pieces from these pants that also had a small stain on them.
This is the general layout. In the end I only had enough fabric for 14 pieces of skirt which worked out fine.
I sewed all the skirt piece together and finished the seams.
At this point I decided to test out the dye bath before I wasted anymore time sewing. There was some dipping and knot tying and rubber banding and rinsing.
When the pieces were dry they looked like this. I was satisfied that the stains were well disguised but the whole effect was a little too pink for my taste.
So I tried this.
I threw some old coffee grounds on my creation, which believe it or not, is not the craziest thing I have ever done to a project.
I once put crisco on my shoes. Sadly and similarly to the crisco experiment the coffee did not really work. It washed right out and left me with the same very pink result I had before.
So then I tried this.
I figured if it worked for the alcohol inks it might worked on fabric. Further research supported this theory.
The result was still pretty pink but better so......
I gathered the skirt and sewed the pieces together added some belt-loops make from the sleeve cuffs and added another strip for some length.
Happy Upcycling,
