I suspect this is a lesson in why you shouldn’t clean wearing nice clothes and definitely why you shouldn’t use bleach, m’kay but I thought I’d ask anyway.

I managed to flick bleach all over one of my favourite t-shirts but I’m not quite ready to give up on it just yet. The shirt has a printed design on it so I can’t bleach and re-dye the whole shirt.

Googling around, I’ve seen some suggestions of disguising the pale dots with permanent marker – the shirt is brown though so I don’t know if I’ll find a pen to match.

The design is a bright cartoon design so I might get away with adding some “noise” to the picture with fabric paint or reverse/normal appliqué.

Failing all that, I guess I could make something else with the fabric/design or since it fits well, take it apart to make a pattern to use to make my own fitted t-shirts in the future. I’d really like to keep it as a tshirt though – any other suggestions?

We’ve had an email from Jess:

Is there anything I can do with onion skins instead of just throwing them in the compost? I remember reading about using them to dye eggs at one point but I don’t want to dye eggs! Any other ideas?

Ours always go straight in the compost – usually because I’m getting into a panic about making the rest of the onion-based meal (burning! where’s the stock!? argh, we’re out of cheese! etc etc) – but I like the idea of doing something more with them too.

Apparently you can use them for dyeing other wool or cotton based things and not just eggs, but cotton stuff doesn’t tend to be very colour-fast so maybe use it for artwork or hardly-washed soft furnishings instead of your new favourite tshirt.

Is there anything else that can be done with them? Other practical or crafty suggestions? Or culinary ones (I have half a memory of them being good for reducing the taste of burnt stews…?)?

(Photo by grafbea)

I was sorting through a kitchen cupboard the other day and found three half bottles of food colouring from the days when I used to make colourful icing for cakes (mmm, sugar and E numbers).

All three – the faux-primary colours of red, yellow and blue – have gone past the “best before” date on their lids but even not taking that into consideration, I’m unlikely to use them for their intended purpose in the near future since I’ve stopped baking that type of cake and I get my E numbers through large quantities of orange squash these days.

So what else can I use them for? I’m tempted to try them for dying fabric but suspect the colour would just run with water – is that the case? What about other use as other dyes such as in paint?