Embellishing to cover stains--tutorial!

Embellishing to cover stains--tutorial!

• 3.28.2011

I am so excited to share a tutorial with you, the first one since I started working full-time in January.  I love doing step-by-step tutorials but it does take time to do fun little projects that I can share with you and do instructions on!  So I am super glad to bring you this one, a technique for covering up stains on otherwise perfectly good clothes =).

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.

It looks fine sitting or hanging, but when I put it on I noticed a very visible stain on the left-center front.  It's funny, you can see it on the tee also, but it was soooo much more apparent when I looked at myself in the mirror from a few feet away.  Must be something about the stripes...

I bought it anyway (did I mention, $2.50 for Ella Moss? ;)) and brought it home to be embellished/mended.

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...

So, here's the tutorial.

• 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!

Ta-da!
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??