Day 339: Miss Fix It Dress

A less observant refashionista might not have noticed anything amiss with today’s dress.

But look a little closer!

Some of the black stripes have bled onto the white stripes, making the whole thing look pretty shabby from close up.  Also, the length was just a tad too long for my tastes.

I got started by chopping off some of the bottom fabric.

Then, I started a dye bath with these guys:

Some of you are probably wondering what’s up with my color choice.  First off, the fabric of this dress is a cotton/polyester blend.  This means that it isn’t going to take on a very saturated hue.  I wanted to dye it a soft grey, but I hate flat grey.  Adding a bit of Kelly Green dye to the mix will give it a more complex and interesting color.

To make things even more interesting, I grabbed a few hair ties…

…and bunched up different parts of the skirt of my dress like so:

I dropped it into the bath for about 30 minutes, gave it a good rinse & dry, then put it on my dress form.

I grabbed the undyed bottom section, and pinned it to my new dress.

I started to stitch it down, and kept coming up with the same problem:  The upper thread kept breaking off!  🙁

I re-threaded my machine, and switched out the needle.  No dice.  What to do?!?!

Thankfully, I have some very knowledgeable readers out there!  When I started having problems with my machine coming unthreaded, a few of you told me I needed to clean my machine.

Methinks they were right!

I ran out the door to meet a friend for some celebratory sushi!

Cheers!