Upcycling – Restore faded or colour-run clothes

Colours running in the wash is annoying. A blue sock that sneaked in with white shirts, or a red T-shirt hastily (and unhelpfully) added to a jeans wash that came out purple? It happens, and there’s often not a lot you can do about it. Even when colours don’t run, they fade, and that can shorten the life of clothes that are otherwise in excellent condition.

For colour-run problems, as part of the Dylon range at Art and Craft Valley we now have Dylon’s SOS Colour-Run Remover. This is designed to remove the excess dye that has run, turning shirts back to white, not blue-grey, and the T-shirt in our example back to red rather than lilac.

While it can work from 30°C some users suggest it is better to go with at 60°C on a cotton cycle, and is best used while the stain or colour-run is new.

Of course, some colour-runs won’t budge. If they are too dark, or off-colour or just plain obstinate, you may prefer to simply overdye the clothes. For that, we have Dylon Dyes, both the machine washable ones and handwash versions. (Dylon have just launched their ‘Re-Dye Don’t Re-Buy’ campaign to help the environment by keeping clothes in use longer, so why not save a pair of jeans, save yourself some money, and save the planet the CO₂ equivalent of a flight to Madrid!)

We’ve covered how to use the machine dyes before (click here to read) and the hand dyes are similarly simple. Come in and have a chat if you are curious, we’d love to help!