Dealing with stains - A Paganoonoo Patti blouse with a trick

These two starting garments may not look like much, but both are beautifully soft.  The embroidered one is linen and the other cotton. The linen has a slightly iridescent quality.  The cotton one simply will not wrinkle. 

One of the things I love about upcycling is that you know exactly how the fabric will behave because it's already been cleaned many times. 

The color combination is a subtle play on this one shade of green.  

I liked the combination so much that I broke my three fabrics rule and just used these two starting garments.  

I decided to upcycle the garments using the Paganoonoo Patti Pattern as I wanted to show off the embroidered linen in the back panel. 

  What you don't see is the stains on the linen garment, grease spots and slight bleaching in some parts. I decided to make a feature out of the problems. 

   

I decided to embroider a running stitch around the lighter spots. The shapes are organic and I really like them as a "feature". 

The color of embroidery thread is deliberately chosen from the other side of the color wheel to create excitement. I added a couple non-functional buttons for interest.  

I also used fabric pens to add in dots, making it more like a patterned fabric. 

The same (upcycled) buttons are on the front.  I did not have the smaller size buttons (collar) so I used new thread on those buttons to tie in the color. I also repeated the dots down the placket.

The grease spots are hidden in plain sight by wide circular bands around the stains using the fabric pen. Looking closely it is really impossible to see the difference in color between the stained parts and the rest of the fabric. 

Overall I think I ended up with a much more interesting garment than it would have been without the stains as features.  Plus I really ended up with a third fabric through the embellishment. 

Happy Halloween!

P.S. - Check out Paganoonoo upcycling clothing patterns here.