How to camouflage bleach stains

This black dress became a victim of overenthousiastic cleaning and ended up sporting some bleach stains. But that didn't mean this dress was now ready for the landfill. On the contrary! Time to camouflage!

Stain spotting

All in all these bleach stains were rather small, just a few drops here and there. That's why I decided to camouflage them using a rice stitch. That means you sew stitches of about 1 centimeter long, but instead of following a pattern, you do it randomly. Just as if you have spilled some rice.

Choosing your thread

I went for white and gold thread, so it contrasted nicely on the original black. I alternated these stitches, sometimes using only white, sometimes only gold, and sometimes mixing both threads. Here and there - for example on top of the actual stains - I sew 5 of these stitches in a flower pattern. To brighten it all up.

Repairing holes

While I was busy camouflaging the stains, I also noticed a few little holes here and there. To cover up the biggest hole, I fixed some black fabric to the back, and embroidered all over it using the same rice stitch.

The other two holes that I discovered were slightly smaller. Instead of camouflaging them, I decided to actually emphasize them. So I used a whipstitch all along the edge, so it looked like a nicely finished hole, surrounded by rice stitches.

I'm pretty proud of the end result, and even think that this simple black dress has been upcycled to something that looks even better than it did before. What do you think?

Do you have a dress spotting stains lying around and do you want to start wearing it again?  Feel free to drop me a line, and together we can find a solution.