It started with black pants and an idea from TikTok (where all great teens in this day and age get their ideas from). I saw one girl that dyed a pair of black jeans with bleach and made really cool designs with them. I thought to myself, “I have bleach, I can totally dye black pants!” That was my first mistake. So as any teen does I went to my friends and asked them if they wanted to have bleach dyeing night and of course because we are all bored they said yes!
We chose a night to go adventure to ‘Wallymart’ as we like to call it and pick up the materials. Because not all of us wanted to do this we picked up some art supplies for the others to have a craft night. But my friend Jacob and I were determined to bleach dye clothing apparel. He wanted a sweatshirt, and I wanted these jeans. We should’ve seen it from the beginning because Walmart didn’t have a single black sweatshirt for him to dye, not even a crewneck! So, we went to Target to pick one up and they also did not have a single black sweatshirt that was dyeing material. At that point in the night, I had forgotten about an assignment I had so I had to go home.
After the assignment, I got the pants out and tried them on. Thank goodness I did because they were way too small, that was the second sign I should’ve given up. Thankfully after telling another friend my plan and dilemma, they said they were going to Walmart, so I tagged along and got the right sized pants, or so I thought. I went home again, tried on the pants again, and they were too big! This was the third sign of the project but I was too stubborn to even think about giving up so I decided that I was a seamstress and could hem the pants to my leg length and take in the waist. The only other time I had sowed anything or done anything related to that was when my friend bought a romper on accident and I made it into a dress. So, I was basically a seamstress and convinced myself to just do it. My original plan was to scrunch up the bottom of the pants and my brain didn’t even get as far as the waist. After an hour of trying to figure out how to scrunch the bottoms, I gave up and I decided to just cut the bottom off and make them frayed looking and roll them up. By this point, I was too deep in this project to give up on it completely, so I was determined to figure out how to take in the waist. I again found another TikTok video about how to take in the waist of pants and this time it actually worked… kind of! They are still big but it’s ok.
Then the biggest defeat of the whole project was the bleaching. The only reason why I got these stupid jeans, and it was the biggest failure. I have never worked with bleach or washed with bleach because I’ve never had to. I sat down, got my materials, bleach, black jeans, paintbrushes, and a good spirit. I wanted to put flames on the butt pockets of the jeans, so I used the paintbrush to paint on bleach to the pants. While doing this I realized that maybe I should’ve researched so after putting bleach on one side of these pants I stopped and researched. I saw that the pants should be turning a rusty red after 10 min, so I did the other side and waited. After 10 minutes nothing happened, so I waited more and more until after a night out I came back, and nothing happened to the pants. So, I thought maybe they need to soak in water? They did not need to soak in water at all! After they dried I got my thinking cap on and some paint on a paintbrush and painted flames on my pants. Long story short: TikTok is not the solution to your problems and research before you do!