Bleach Spot Rescue

 

We've all been there . . . the other day while doing a load of whites and adding bleach I obviously splattered some on a new dress that I've hardly worn!  Now the picture above doesn't look nearly as bad as it was because I neglected to take a picture before my first step which was to add some darning stitches over the stain to blend it a bit.  I did this because the contrast was SO stark, I wasn't sure my embroidery would cover it completely!

I purchased this embroidery file from a great online site called Embroidery Library for 1.99.  Using my embroidery machine I sewed a few test runs on scrap fabric to determine where to align it to get the most coverage of my bleach spots. 

The exposure of the photo shows white areas but that's from the photo.  The bleach spots were completely covered. Now, of course the stain was seriously, smack-dab in the middle of the front of the dress so having just ONE flower in the middle was kind of weird so . . .

I added more! By rotating and mirroring the one design, I was able to achieve what I think is a pretty, random garland of flowers falling from one shoulder, across the dress and down to the other edge.

Saved!  Phew!  

Now I know not everyone has an embroidery machine BUT, you could also do hand embroidery on this. My daughter does hand embroidery that is simply amazing and there are lots of kits and YouTube video tutorials that you could check out. 

Another thing I've done is used a permanent marker on spots. Depending on the color of the item, I can usually find something that will conceal the stain. I may have to touch up from time to time after washing and drying but for small spots, it does work. One tip: Start out LIGHT! Just lightly 'feather' the pen over the area slowly building the color. Most likely your pen will not exactly match your garment (unless it's black) so you are going for "less-noticeable-in-your-face-hey-do-you-know-you-have-a-spot-on-your-dress?" look, rather than total coverage.

A new-to-me dye product, Dylon, could also be an option.  Yes, probably most of us grew up on Rit Dye but this is a newer powder dye that from what I've observed gives great results especially if you are just changing the color completely of say a white shirt.  But I came across a video by Julia Caban on YouTube where she shows how to cover spots using this dye. It seems to work quite well and my guess is you could combine colors to get a custom color as well.

I know a lot of people don't use regular bleach any more but even though there's a risk involved (i.e. collateral clothing damage) I still will continue to use it.  I'll just try to be more careful and not wear brand new clothes when doing my whites!