Embellishing to cover stains--tutorial!
I bought this cute Ella Moss tee at Goodwill on sale for $2.50--it is flattering, cute, and such a great brand! I love her striped tees and tanks.
I thought about ideas to cover up the stain in a cute way, and my favorite was adding black knit flowers around the stain and up the neck. Asymmetrically/artistically, since it's a less structured tee to begin with. The tie neck and blousing at the bottom make it a candidate for an organic trim pattern, rather than something structured and on the straight lines.
I had some 1" wide swatches of three different types of black knits, left from another project, although still all free from JoAnn's. 1" was really all the width I needed for making petals and flower centers...
- Cut out the flower shapes you want. Or stars, or ruffles, or whatever.
- Place the largest petals as a base layer on the tee where you want them. If they're really unruly, you can put spray adhesive on the back before laying them down.
- Carefully pin the petals down (not necessary if you used spray adhesive).
- Sew along the outside edges of the petals or shapes to keep them down for good. I used contrasting white thread! If you had a colored shirt you could use one of the colors of the stripes.
- Trim all your threads. Trust me. Do it. Before you add more layers...
- Add a second layer of petals. You don't have to, but it really makes it more fun to have a more 3-D shape. You don't need as many petals or shapes on this top layer. Pin or adhere them down.
- Do your topstitching on that layer.
- Trim threads (back and front!).
- For fun, add a decorative center! If it's on a fancy top, you could hand-sew some beads or sequins on, but for this simple tee I just did a machine-embroidered star in the center of the flower.
- Wear!
I love the open neckline. It's so easy with a black and white tee, since I can easily find black fabric and white thread, but this would be super cute on a more pastel or netural tee.
Like I originally thought, you could add more flowers going up the necklines. I hope it doesn't just look like a shirt with a flower on the boob...
After I finished this project, I looked around in my saved "embellished tops" picture folder and found some of these cuties from Anthro over the seasons:
(See? Striped things are super cute embellished!)
Love that last one. I have seen so many nautical stripes in stores this season, and I loooove them. This makes me want to do more tee-embellishing (one of my specialties, you may remember if you've been reading a long time!). How about you? Do you have any tees or tops that you could try out some fabric love on??