Sunday, November 20, 2011

Saree fabric to Shirt refashion

This is a refashion project from before I joined Refashion Co-op I thrifted a piece of 'art silk' purple saree fabric a while back. I love the royal purple colour and the gold design. I made a button down shirt with this fabric using an old Simplicity shirt pattern from the 90's.

The saree fabric looked something like this (this is not the actual picture of my saree as I didn't take a picture before I cut it up. However this is very close to the real thing):
I used the gold designs to make the shirt's cuffs as well as the buttons. I loved it and wore it many times to the office and on weekends. I got lots of comments about it. Unfortunately, I underestimated how 'un-colourfast' the fabric is. I handwashed it and the purple dye just bled non-stop. Now there are slight blotches of discolouration here and there! Bummer! I really like this shirt. If anyone has any idea how to fix the blotches please please let me know!

I need to work on my ironing skill..... :-(

2 comments:

  1. Hi... just stopped over from reading re-fashion co-op. I was wondering... you mentioned that you have blotches on this now... could you maybe take off the gold (temporarily) re-wash or re-dye it and then "set" the color? You can set it by soaking in a tub/bucket of cold water and do a rinse of vinegar! That should keep it from being blotchy again. You will probably want to remove your buttons also and any other of the gold trim! Good luck!

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  2. Thanks Jean C! I think your solution is great and probably the only thing I can do to salvage the shirt.

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