baste-and-bleach.

As soon as I reach for my running shoes, it starts to rain. Not a gentle drizzle, noo... it's pelting down, as if the rain gods are laughing at my attempts to establish a proper exercise regime.
I sigh, withdraw my hand and stare at through window. A half-hearted thought crosses my mind to just brave the weather, and go for it. But my inner Shia laBoeuf  ("just do it!") loses it to my desire to stay warm and dry inside; with a cup of tea and my laptop, writing you all this post.



Backing up a few hours in time, to this morning, when I was cleaning up my wardrobe -belated spring cleaning- and found this:

 It was just a mess. Actually, this picture does the top too much justice: the colour was all wrong: sad, faded, and with just that hint of Blah that you get from accidentally washing light clothing together with dark jeans.

I know: I should have gone rid of it a long time ago, but while being a mess, this top was a very comfortable mess nevertheless. So -slightly ashamed- I kept wearing it; invisible underneath longsleeves or jumpers, or occasionally as a sleeping top. But even that made me feel guilty, as I was probably giving Joost an eyesore every time he woke up next to me looking like that.

So, I couldn't keep wearing it as is, and neither did I really feel like ditching the top. So, there's only one way forward, isn't it? A refashion!

I wanted to keep it simple ( come on, it's not like this top is worth the trouble of a major refashion, and inspiration quickly came from not one, but three different sources, being:

•  this refashion, where I used bleach to refashion my old jeans,
• then there was also this one, where I used basting as an alternative to tie-and-dye,
• and finally, the fact that I had to clean the shower, and was going to use bleach anyway... 

so... all combined gave me the idea for.... a baste-and-bleach refashion!

So, baste-and-bleach, how does that work out? 

Well, I began by basting the top..

not too precise!

I didn't measure my stitches or lines, I just went along with it, while watching with one eye my newest guilty pleasure: the Durrells. 

I began at the bottom, and simply started spiraling up towards the neck seams. Easy does it!

And luckily, it didn't take too long before the while top was completely basted.

Whelp! I giant, yellow worm!!

BewarenBewaren

Time for the bleach bath! I made little bath with hot water and a good bit of bleach ( about twice the amount that I would use for cleaning) and tossed my worm  top in. Have a nice soak!

And in case you wondered why an environmentally-conscious girl like me used such copious amounts of bleach merely for this top: I was able to reuse the bleach-mix for two other refashions as well (I'll write about those soon) and used the leftovers to clean the shower. ka-ching!

After 15 minutes of soaking, I rinsed the top, pulling the basting out, and done!

Tadaa! As we speak the top is still drying on my clothesline (indeed, in the rain...) so I don't have a pressed and primped version yet, but I think these pictures quite show what it looks like.

I really quite like the colours now. While I've always liked yellow, the previous yellow of this top was just horrible for my skin-tone (and without any pattern, just a one-way ticket of frumpville all together)

The baste-and-dye effect gives it a bit of a festival feeling, while the yellow keeps it fresh and modern. And I hope dat the bleached parts lighten the top enough to work with my complexion.

The effect of baste-and-dye really look like tie-and-dye, but the advantage of basting is that the pattern is much more even, and easier to control. I always find tie-and-dying ( or the version with elastic) quite hard to control, and usually and up with an unintended discoloured back or armpit or something like that. So I really like this technique!

I honestly look forward to wearing this thing. I'm thinking dark jeans, flats and perhaps a summery blazer. should be nice, I guess! What do you think, worth the trouble, or not? I'd love to hear!