Dyed shirt

I found this very nice quality, fine cotton, boring shirt at the Green Shed underground - where almost everything is priced at $4 - a good deal for nice clothing pieces (not such a good deal for pillow slips - so I left some behind the other day).



Even though the colour was not very me, and I don't normally wear buttoned shirts, it was a good fit and the truly lovely fabric - so fine it was almost like silk - sold me on it. At this point I hadn't dyed my t-shirt yet but the idea was on my mind that day, so it occurred to me that this shirt could also be a contender for a dye treatment.



I could have just overdyed it in a single colour, but after the fun I had with my t-shirt I decided to give this one the jar treatment too.  First I tried just the wine colour. I was careful to make it somewhat symmetrical in the way I folded and twisted it, but the dye really only took on the collar and tails and cuffs. It was patchy and looked a bit like something I'd been wearing as a painting smock rather than a deliberate all-over effect. I left it for a while like that, not sure what to do. Then when I got around to doing the final round on the weird grey tablecloth, I did the same thing with this shirt - damp fabric and sprinkled black dye powder and salt. I didn't have high expectations but was thrilled with the result. Once again there appeared out of the black, bits of other colours, particularly blue, and some yellow. And much more than on the linen tablecloth, some quite delicate patterns and shapes emerged. I think this is because of the fineness of the fabric. On the back yoke where there are two layers of fabric, you can even see different overlapping patterns where the dye has taken differently on the two layers.

I'm so happy with this shirt and have been wearing it all the time. Mostly with jeans but I did also pull it off as office-appropriate (at least I think so), with a grey pencil skirt and pale pink pearl necklace.