I love making my own clothes. I envy those who can crochet, sew, embroider, or anything of the sort. One of my first big clothing projects was bleach dying an old black hoodie that I had experimented with once before. This is the timeline of the project:
July 27, 2025:
I followed a YouTube tutorial in which they showed off a really cool hack for drawing from references. I found my reference and put it into an mobile app literally called "Grid Maker for Drawing"; this way, instead of trying to draw an entire reference, you can focus on referencing each tile one-at-a-time to more accurately draw the full image. I layed out the hoodie and used chalk to draw the grid and began the vary tedious process of copying each tile. In hindsight, I should have used a thinner classroom style chalk, but all I had at the time was pavement chalk.
July 28, 2025:
Nothing much to add here. I spent the entire day chalking this bottom portion. Because of the think, smudging chalk, it was very hard to copy the intricate details. I was also having trouble referencing the image and figuring out what rib went where.
August 1, 2025:
The chalk was finished! And it was at this moment I knew... I messed up. I completely skewed the ribcage!!! I decided to ignore it until tomorrow; I was just proud that I had finsihed the chalking.
August 2, 2025:
I spent the day bleaching. I layed the hoodie out and put a towel covered by a trash bag inside of the hoodie to prevent bleeding, and I made sure that wherever I was bleaching, it was over the bag. I used jars with different ratios of water and bleach, mainly, 50%, 75%, and 100% bleach. I decided to put a cross in the awkward space left by my snafu with the positioning. I tried to bleach the right side more heavily to make a shading effect, and I think it turned out well. After letting it sit and giving it a wash, this was the final result!
November 16, 2025:
Here you can see that the bleach has held up really well! The whites of the design have spread slightly, but besides that the color is still rich and detailed. Overall, this was a really fun project that I would highly recommend to anyone wnating to recycle some of their worn out clothing. Just make sure you have lots of fine chalf and heavy paperweights to hold your hoodie in place while you draw. Don't be afraid to lay the bleach on thick; you'll figure out how much you need to get the desired look.
