Refreshing Old Makes: Dying My Favorite Skirt

Today's post is another simple one with a big result. My Brown Melissa Skirt is, to this day, still one of my favorite things I've ever sewn. I posted this back in November of 2015 (!) and I wore this skirt at least once a week (usually a few times a week, to be honest) for years. Years! But over time, the color in the skirt faded pretty badly - also I gained weight and wasn't able to wear this for about a year - plus one day when I did try to wear it, I noticed a few oil spots that I spent quite a bit of time trying to remove to no avail. I folded this up in my sewing stuff and would occasionally try removing the stains only to be disappointed each time. Last month I started going through some of my old makes I hadn't been able to fit into due to my weight gain - I've lost weight recently and wanted to see what beloved pieces were now wearable again - and this skirt popped into my head. When I discovered it fit great, I knew it was time to finally buy some hard core dye and try to get this back into rotation again.

This skirt is made of a mystery thrift store fabric that I have never been able to successfully identify. I knew it had some polyester in it, which meant that regular Rit dye wouldn't work. I had to buy Rit Dye More, which is designed for synthetic fabrics. I will confess I was afraid that I would spill this dye in my kitchen and irreparably stain something, which also made my put off this project. But I really wanted to wear this on my trip to Epcot in September, so I bit the bullet and risked it. 

Unlike regular Rit dye, Rit Dye More is a bit more particular with how to get the best results. You have to do this in a pot on the stove to keep the temperature consistently high. You're supposed to mix the dye then sustain just before boiling in the water for the entire duration and you're supposed to keep your piece in the dye for at least 30 minutes, stirring constantly. 

Not having any throw away utensils on hand, I used a large wooden paint stick to stir my skirt. Waiting for that huge pot to almost boil took quite a while (I used my canning pot because it's the biggest I have and it doesn't get any food put in it so I wouldn't worry about ingesting chemicals from the dye later on), but then the standing at the pot and stirring for 30 minutes felt a bit like an eternity. The whole process took about an hour and a half with all that heat up time and everything. Then it tells you to rinse in cool water until the water runs clean, and for good measure I threw it in the washing machine with a color catcher and a mild detergent just to make sure I wouldn't end up with dye transfer later.

After all was finished and dried, this was my skirt :) It's not quite as dark as when I first made it, but I love this nice medium brown I achieved. It's certainly much deeper than the faded mess I started with. Also if I decide I want it darker one day, I could just do the whole process again and maybe keep it in longer. We'll see if the sewing lasts long enough for me to contemplate that, lol.

And happily, my oil stain is almost completely masked by the darker color. I can see it because I knew exactly where it was, but no one else notices a thing while I'm wearing it. Success! Also a happy byproduct of the dye is that it dyed my buttons as well. The buttons are a carved resin, and a few of them had worn down through the brown colored outside into the gray centers with time and probably slapping the insides of my dryer. Now the buttons are evenly brown again, even on the areas that were gray. Yay!

I know this is a terrible picture, but this is how it looks on :) I wore this to Disney all day and had no dye rubbed on my undies, which was another worry of mine. I'm happy to report that dying this was much easier, if a little more time consuming, than I originally thought and I would have no qualms dying a synthetic fabric again in the future should the need arise. Now I have my favorite skirt back and wearable. Yay for refreshing old makes!

Mending Mending Mending

A few weeks ago, I found myself a wanting to sew but not wanting to get involved in any big projects. I also had a decent mess going in my sewing room that I didn't want to make worse with all the relocating of items that goes into a new project. Oddly enough, I actually decided I was in the mood to do some mending! This is extremely rare, so I decided to go with the flow and see what all I could get fixed up. About 45 minutes later, I had this pile ready to go back into use. Not bad, eh? 

Isn't it funny how most of us don't like mending? I've read several other bloggers say they would rather start an entirely new project than pick apart an old one to mend it. I'm not quite that staunchly against it, in fact I love the personal satisfaction that goes along with saving something and wearing it again - particularly if I went to all the trouble to make it in the first place. I just have to be in the right mood to actually do any mending. My mending basket overflowed before I moved in July, but I just kept adding to it. So what did I pull out of that bin and make wearable?

First up was my Southern Lady Plantain Top that I made back in 2015. This was an unplanned refashion that I just really wanted to make on Labor Day weekend, but the only thread I had that was an appropriate color was heavy duty button thread. In my naïveté, I thought this would be fine. It wasn't. Even in the original post I mentioned how it was scratchy on my arms with that thick thread in the bobbin. This eventually annoyed me so much that I exiled this shirt to the bin even though I love the shirt itself. This time I had olive green thread on hand, so I was able to redo the twin needle hem and put my standard woolly nylon thread in the bobbin. So much more comfortable! Time will tell if this is enough to make the shirt wearable or if I will need to change out the thread in other areas like the neckband. For now, I'm just happy to have this awesome shirt back in rotation - and just in time for the fall colors to look appropriate :)

Since I had the twin needle already set up, my next project was my Deep Teal Boogie Shirt. I have constant issues with hems coming undone. I've even tried tying the bobbin thread together, but it's no use it seems (any tricks out there?). This hem came out a while ago and I had been wearing it anyway, lol. I often tuck this shirt in, so it didn't really bother me. I finally pulled it all out and redid it - here's hoping is stays in better this time!

Next up was my Gertie's Cherries Sorbetto. This top has been in my closet since 2015, yet I have only worn it maybe 3 times since it was too short due to lack of fabric. I just couldn't bare to part with it since I love the fabric. Recently I tried it with my Pippi Pinafore though and it was perfect! The shirt stays tucked in with my pinafore, so there was no worry that it is technically a little too short. I wore it, then decided to wash it and hang it to dry. This would've been fine HAD I ACTUALLY FINISHED THE SEAMS! What the heck? I don't know if I used pinking sheers to no avail or if I just completely forgot to do anything to the seams whatsoever, but when I pulled it out of the wash it was a frayed mess on the insides. Now that I have a serger, I just went down each seam I could get at and serged the seam allowances. The sleeve seams were too small for me to get the serger onto, so I just used fray check there. I'm hoping this isn't too little too late now that I have finally found a way to wear this top. Time will tell!

Since I was on a roll, I finally tackled this store bought eyelet skirt. A few years ago I caught the back on something at work and ripped a big hole through several of the eyelets. I kind of wish I had taken a before photo to show - it was super obvious, plus I didn't want any further ripping or unraveling. I always liked this skirt, so I just chucked it in my mending basket until now. To fix this, I did the same thing I usually do to fix sheets. I used tiny pieces of fusible interfacing on the back to hold the ripped sections together and not be visible through the holes. Next, I dropped the feed dogs on my machine and used my free motion embroidery foot to just go to town over the ripped areas. I like to make sure I go back and forth in one direction first and then go back and forth perpendicular to the first stitches to mimic the weave of the fabric. Since the fabric is white and it's so busy with eyelets, the repair just fades into the rest. I'm really happy with how this turned out and it even survived a trip through the washer and dryer.

The final items were just silly little things. First was sewing a flower thing back on a baby sock (unpictured) - that sock was brand new and it fell off during the first wear! Good thing I can sew - that baby ain't coming off now. Then I pulled out possibly my oldest item for mending - this tie for my husband. I don't remember where we got this, but he always liked it and used to wear it quite often until the back look came unfastened from the tie many years ago. This took seriously less than 2 minutes to sew back down and I even made sure to secure the other side just in case it was close behind. Isn't it ridiculous that it took me so long to fix this? No excuses, man. This was just silly.

So I spend somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes on all these items and that included all the machine changes to accomplish each repair. Now I have 6 items to add back into the family rotation :) Here's hoping it doesn't take me as long to do the rest of the mending in my basket!