I have been working on a simple sweatshirt pattern. The base size will be my husband's size and once I'm happy with the fit on him, I'll size up and down.
For my first toile/mock up I bought one black and one bright green piece of sweatshirt fabric from the remnant bin at my local fabric store. My goal is always to make my toiles as good as possible because I love wearable toiles! There were a few modifications that I made directly to the sweatshirt to improve the fit after I finished the toile, which then luckily resulted in a wearable garment. However, one of the remnants was a bright, almost neon green and I could tell the sweatshirt would forever remain in my husband's closet. Therefore, I decided to dye the sweatshirt and the remaining bright green leftovers black.
It turned out that I put too much fabric into the dye pot and the pigments didn't cover the fabric evenly. This resulted in blotchy fabric with patches that are darker and some that are lighter. However, this reminds us of tie dye and despite not being the result we went for, it isn't actually too bad. Furthermore, the dye didn't manage to cover up the green entirely and instead of black the originally bright green fabric turned a beautiful dark green. This too might be due to the fabric to dye ratio or because there may have been some polyester in the fabric (see our other post). Interestingly, the original colour shines through on the wrong side of the fabric a lot more than on the wrong side.
Contrary to my expectations, my husband is now wearing the sweatshirt often, much to my mum's chagrin who told me that she would gladly take the dyed sweatshirts off our hands if he doesn't wear it.
We learned that the dyeing process isn't always easily predictable, but you might end up with pleasant surprises! And if you don't, you can always dye it again :) Let us know what you think about this dye job and if we inspired you to do the same!
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