Make do and mend... bringing black jeans back to life

After watching Kirstie's new series "Vintage Home" and realising that I do a reasonable amount of "making and mending" I thought I would share with you my tips and tricks for making things go a little bit further and lasting a little bit longer !

So, the inspiration for my first post came from the fact that my sister had asked me to re-dye her black jeans, something I have been doing to my own jeans for quite some time, as I'm sure many of you will know, a good pair of jeans can be hard to come by.

To do this, you can either dye by hand (messy!) or dye by washing machine (much easier and I have never had a problem so far with the colour staying around and ruining my other clothes).  This is what the jeans looked like before... a lovely faded shade of black...

You then take some Dylon Wash and Dye (available from large supermarkets or general "sell just about everything stores").  They do a whole range of colours to suit your needs, for this project I bought velvet black"

Then basically, in a nut shell the instructions are:

1. Clear washing machine of any lint/fluff etc
2. Add the dye to the washing machine followed by dry garment (for intense colour change like this one, only put one item in, the more items you add the less dye there is per garment)
3. Set washing machine to 40 degree wash without any detergent or fabric softener in
4. Once cycle has finished, wash with usual detergent and softener for another 40 degree wash (obviously check instructions fully for garments that can't be washed at 40)
5. Dry the garment on an airir or line, don't tumble dry
6. Clean the washing machine by running another 40 degree cycle without detergent before using it for your normal laundry.

And this was the finished result...

Not bad, £6 for the dye to revive a sad grey pair of jeans into almost new, much cheaper than buying new jeans!

Until next time...

Amanda xx