T-shirt dyeing to fix discoloring?

[WhyWeFight]

I dont' know about all of you but I have horrible luck with t-shirts. I looove t-shirts but they always end up getting ruined! From my toothpaste to chlorine soaked kids who want hugs to the mysterious basement floor my t-shirts always end up getting bleached and ruined. It's usually just a tiny spot that's bleached in the most noticeable of places.

I just got a shirt from Threadless (the Russel shirt) and I LOVE IT. But unfortunately my niece got out of the pool and hugged me and it got wrecked. Sad! I only had it two days!  So Threadless said I could return it but they don't have any more girl Russell shirts. I'm wrecked! So I was thinking maybe if you lovely ladies said I could somehow fix this shirt by perhaps taking out all of the color with the Ritz stuff and redying it I would. And maybe I could fix my other shirts!

What do you guys think? I only want to do this if it's going to work. Otherwise I'm out ten bucks and one of my favorite shirts. Any other suggestions?

Thank you my dears!

[pink_vinyl]

Is the shirt solid colored?

[WhyWeFight]

Yeah it's liksted as a silver color. It' just a solid light gray. The bleach spots are peachy. And then there's the silk screening which I don't think the dye would hurt? I'm willing to dye it another color, doesn't have to be silver but I really don't want peach haha.

[feedthesquirrels]

I have the same problem. Bought a new shirt which became my favorite...wore it twice, washed it, and now it has white spots where it somehow got bleached out (i didn't even have any bleach in there...I'm thinking this is from pouring the soap in before letting the water rise *oops*). It's a very light blue, but it's also very noticible. It has dark blue screenprinting on it. If I bought some sky blue dye, would it look ok? I've never dyed a shirt before.

[WhyWeFight]

No ideas lovely ladies?

[choirgirl]

Depending on what the shirt is made of, you might have good luck with dyeing it. If it is a cotton shirt, use something like Dylon Cold Fix dye on it (I buy it at Dick Blick) and not Rit or any all-purpose dye, because those don't always produce consistent results. But you also could end up with a dark shirt with a lighter spot where the bleach was.

You could also decide to go with the bleach, and splatter some more on it. That look is kind of "in" right now.

Screen printing, or even an iron-on t-shirt transfer might actually be your best bet.

[WhyWeFight]

It's already screen printed so I don't want to add anymore. It is 100 percent cotton.  I was thinking about taking all the color out of it and redying it. I'm going to look up that Dye you suggested. Thanks!

[BelovedGoddess]

First of all

Make the rule of no hugging wet kids straight from the pool.  It's hard but stand fast.

don't wear your good clothes around the pool if you can't stick to the first rule.

check the amount of chlorine in the pool, I don't think that it should be strong enough to bleach clothes, can't be good for the kiddies.


Ok that said,

First rinse out bleach affected clothes with vinegar water mix, you need to neutralise the bleach, it can weaken fabrics. 

Over dying often won't work, the bleach marks will still be noticeable, usually on black after overdying with black they will look brown.  But all is not lost, put an embellishment over the bleached area, make a feature of it.