Fall Trend DIY: Grey Jeans

One Fall trend I've been seeing for 2014 is grey jeans. Grey is probably my favorite neutral to wear, so it didn't take many fashion editorial spreads and Old Navy ads on the trend for me to decide that I really wanted a pair of grey jeans for fall. The only problem was that grey jeans certainly do not fall under the category of "necessary" or "special occasion," as stipulated in the no-new-clothes rules. Then I remembered these jeans from my botched bleach job earlier in the year and decided that I would save them by dying them grey.

In this picture they look almost white, but they were more yellowish in person, so they really did not look great.

This experiment was the first time I tried to dye anything other than my hair, and it took a bit of research. You can buy grey dye, but only at specialty stores or online, and I was impatient. By searching around on the Rit website, I found out that you can mix 2 tbsp of black dye with 2 tbsp of royal blue in 3 gallons of water or a low-water washer (like mine) and get a nice steel grey. So, I bought the liquid Rit dye at Walmart and raided my pantry for the other ingredients:

Measuring cup and spoon, salt, dye, and -- not shown -- gloves and a long, plastic spoon.

There are many ways to dye fabric, and the different methods depend on what equipment you have and what kind of fabric you are dying. The internet abounds with all kinds of advice on the matter, and if you decide to try fabric dying, it may work differently for you, but I can only tell you what worked for me. I have a High-Efficiency water saving washer, so what I did is different from what you would do with an ordinary, full load of clothes and water.

Step 1. Pre-wash your clothes. (I threw some light colored khakis in with the jeans, too, just for kicks).

Step 2. Start a new wash cycle on hot.

Step 3. After the washer has filled up with water, stop the cycle and move the garments out of the water.

Step 4. Add 2 tablespoons EACH of black dye and royal blue dye. If your garment is cotton, as mine was, add some salt to the mix. I used 1/3 cup. I just guessed because the amount listed on the bottles was for a full washer, but I think 1/3 cup was good. Note: Wear protective gloves. I only wore the little latex gloves that cover your hands but not your wrists, and some of the dye got on my wrists. I immediately found out that I was allergic, because I broke out right after. Go ahead and invest in the long dishwashing gloves. Use your long plastic spoon to stir the solution together.

Step 5. Add your clothes back into the wash, submerge them completely, and stir everything around.

Step 6. Close your washer and let the cycle continue. When it finishes, your clothes should look like this:

 As you can see, just like when I bleached the pants the first time, the stitching is the same teal color. I actually think the bias-stitching looks cool with the grey, but be forewarned that you could end up with some weird color combos because of the stitching color.

Step 7: The clothes might look a little splotchy, but don't worry. Follow the instructions on the bottle and run the clothes through a wash cycle on warm with detergent. Be more careful than I was and try not to spill detergent directly on the clothes, because then they will come out really splotchy. I was able to solve the splotchiness problem by washing them a second time in hot water with detergent, then repeating the whole dying process, but I could have saved myself the trouble if I'd been a little more careful.

Step 8: After you wash your jeans, throw them in the dryer with a towel that you don't mind getting dirty and let them dry as usual. While that's going on, run your washer again on the clean cycle, with detergent and, if your washer needs it, bleach.

Step 9: You're all done! Just be sure to wash the jeans on cold, by themselves for the first few washes. I'm really pleased with how both the jeans and the khakis I dyed turned out. Here are the new trendy jeans:



Now I feel like I have a brand new pair of jeans and I can't wait to figure out how to style them.