While I can’t say that quarantine has been absolutely fantastic, I have gotten to do some projects I have been putting off now that we have some extra time. This Roscoe Blouse being one of them. I’ve thought a lot about dying fabric before, but always assumed it would be more time consuming than I wanted. And with my free time being far and few in between, I have always focused on making projects that I could achieve in shorter amounts of time. But with all these tye-dye trends popping up for 2020, I knew I could no longer put it off.
My first dying project was some gauze napkins that I was ombré-ing for a style shoot for work. That was the easiest project since the items I was dying were so small. I had some dye left over, so I thought it might be cool to try and dye something bigger with it. The earthy tones were everything I wanted them to be!
I used Camel color Ritdye and I also made a video for this tutorial on IGTV if you want to watch it “live”! Let’s get started! Here are the things that I found handy to have:
- Old saucepan that I could use just for dying.
- Wooden spoon I could throw away.
- Rubber gloves
- Dish soap
- Salt
- 5 Gallon Painters Bucket (Optional)
- Rubber Bands
- RitDye
First things first, I rubberband the fabric. I didn’t have a solid method. I was just grabbing pieces, twisting, and then wrapping a couple rubber bands around it.
I used about 8 cups of water, a dollop of dish soap, and a spoonful of salt. I didn’t let this come to a full boil because I was afraid of a soapy mess overflowing onto my stove. So just beware if you are making a smaller batch. 🙂 I didn’t need a huge one since I wasn’t going to submerge the whole fabric.
Then I added about ⅓ of the Rit Dye bottle and let it sit for a minute.
Since I’m not going to submerge the whole piece of fabric into the dye, I only dipped the twisted portions into the pot. This is why it was nice to have gloves. But be careful because it was still HOT!
Then I kind of squeezed it in on itself to add some color throughout. It was nice to have the bucket to transport it to my balcony to air dry, so I didn’t get dye all over the carpet.
I let it air-dry outside for about 5 hours, and then rinsed out as much dye as I could in my bathtub. Then I gave it a normal cycle in the washing machine and dryer. 🙂
This whole process took about 5 days in total to complete, and most of my projects are about 2-3 days. The first day was dying and washing, the next day I cut out the pattern pieces, and the last three days were spent sewing it together.
Now for the hack:
The sleeves are the same exact shape except I cut it halfway down for the top portion. Then for the bottom portion I added an extra half of the width to the length that was left.
I cut the front bodice into two pieces instead of on the fold. I basically finished it like the wilder gown. I serged the edges, sewed it together, and then double folded it back, and top-stitched it down.
To attach the sleeve and bodice ruffles first you need to serge the edge of the top sleeve portion and the bottom of the bodice. Then I just gathered the bottom and sleeve ruffle like normal. The hardest part is evenly attaching it so that it catches the bodice and/or sleeve. But you’re going to attach right on the top so everything stays exposed.
Then I just sewed everything together like the instructions and left off the neck-ties. 🙂
If you’ve never dyed anything before and have been wanting to, I HIGHLY recommend trying it. It makes you feel like a freaking BOSS and even more proud than if you had only sewn it (which is still massively impressive). This is the Free People Inspired Blouse of my dream. I hope this project encourages you to tackle something you never thought you could try. Have fun sewing!
XOXO,
Courtney Jean
