Saturday, June 12, 2010

Sharpie Magic: Fixing the Ugly

I bought a new Ergo carrier from the folks at babysteals.  I was a little apprehensive about it, but I convinced myself that there was bad lighting in the picture and the real thing would be beautiful.  In real life, the carrier was worse than in the photograph.  It was black with flower embroidery details in the most shocking pink, gold, and blue jewel tones.  The colors were so bright that I was reluctant to wear it out in public.  I've heard many people love their Ergo's and I wanted to love mine too, but I just couldn't.
I tried unpicking the embroidery.  Unpicking it didn't harm the fabric, but they had done such high quality needlework, that I couldn't get the thread to come out.  So I had to take drastic measures with my old friend the Sharpie.  I've used the Sharpie before on fabrics: to cover scuffs on my black shoes, and to blacken the white stitching on black jeans (a decade after Girbaud Jeans made white stitching cool).   In the case of the jeans, the Sharpie worked great, but it washed out and needed to be redone before each wearing.
So with some experience under my belt, and no intention of laundering the carrier frequently, I picked a discrete location to try my fix.  I liked it and proceeded to recolor all of the embroidery.  It turned the glaring jewel tones into muted accents.  The gold became brown, the pinks became dark purple, and the blues turned to navy.

This:





Became That:



I will now be wearing my baby proudly!     

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