The First Refashion Friday!

It's A Tie Dye Kinda Day

So here it is!  My first of many remakes of my thrift store buys!  I'm so excited to show off my transformations to the world!  Before I get started, I felt it important to let you know why I chose the name "All Things New".  Although we are talking about clothing on this page, every garment that I touch I think, "this piece of clothing was finished according to someone else's standards.  It was worthless and unusable to them."  Isn't that how we feel sometimes in our lives?  Worthless, useless, used, worn, and unable to be something that someone wants?  Yet, just like the piece of fabric that I have found new value in when I look at it, Christ finds value in us.  When we allow Christ to be the Lordship of our lives, He takes us and makes us into something beautiful.  He cleanses us with His shed blood (which means He forgives us of our sins through His sacrifice of dying on the cross) and He makes us into a new creation.  The Bible says that "the old is gone, and the new has come."  We are no longer what we were, but have been made new!  And, just like these old clothes that have been "remade" our lives have meaning and beauty because of His new work done in our lives!  So, there you have it!  All Things New!  Here we go...

 Ok, here is a lovely picture of the original garment that my husband took.  Isn't it so lovely?  Weren't not so pretty when we start out, are we?  This shirt was yellow and faded, but I loved the length of the shirt/dress.  I also secretly loved the little pockets on the front.  The fabric was made out of 60% cotton, 25% Rayon, 10% wool, and 5% silk.  Cotton is best of dying, but we gave it a good anyhow.  This is my first experience with dye, just a forewarning.





Originally, I was going to keep the top yellow and the middle red with the bottom a turquoise color.  As you will see, that didn't happen like I thought it would because the dyes didn't take as I thought, so this was the process...

I started with Scarlet for the middle section.  I heated up a large pot of water because you are suppose to have very hot water.  I used a tub (pictured in the pictures).  As you can see, I used a couple gallons of water, just enough to soak my fabric.














 I used the whole package as I had read that red dye doesn't darken very well and I wanted it to be red red.  Because of the fabric composition, I also added 1/2 cup of salt and 1/2 cup of vinegar.  This was recommended on the dye package.




I can not tell you how much anxiety I had before I stuck that fabric in!  Who knew it would be so nerve wracking!  Anyways, I carefully placed the bottom half of the garment into the dye, draping the top half off the side to hopefully keep it from getting dye on it.  I let this set in the red for an hour.










After the hour, I began by rinsing with warm and eventually cold water, keep the top out of the water, so it would get dye on it.  I was not very successful, as we will get to in a minute.  I rinsed until the water ran clear.  I laid it out flat to allow it to dry for a short time before I began the process again on the next color.



Once I had the red done,  I moved on to Navy blue.  The fabric dyed too dark to go with turquoise and I thought a nice purple would look good.  I repeated the above process, just taking less in the dye bath, leaving the yellow and red sections hanging off the side.  Sorry, I forgot to take a pic of what this looked like, but you get the idea, right?  After an hour, I rinsed that out just like I did the red, being careful not to get the rest of the garment in the water.









I was totally unsuccessful at keeping the yellow part out of the red and blue dye, so we went with a Camel color to the whole garment, mostly to cover the flaws on the yellow:)








I only did a quick dye bath in this color, long enough to turn the yellow, maybe 15 minutes.  Then I rinsed the whole thing and laid it in a safe place to dry.  I have yet to actually wash this piece in the washing machine, but when I do, I will do it by itself because I'm sure some more dye will wash out and I don't want to stain other clothes.








 So here it is!  I paired it up with a brown pair of legging I had.  This demin jacket I got on the same day at the Savers for $2 and I love it!  It's actually suppose to be a dress for a skinny person, but it has a slimming effect for a girl my size:)










My daughter took the finished pictures.  These lower 2, she said I had to look like I was laughing.  Do you get the effect? Haha.

I happen to be a jewelry collector, so I paired this one up with some purple (because the bottom half came out more purple than blue-red and blue make?)  and a burgundy hair wrap with purple and brown flowers.  I thought it was cute:)