X X X

I recently had the privilege to work on an auction project where 100% of the proceeds from sales go to Pacer’s National Bullying Prevention Center. The task was to embellish, decorate or re-design a plain American Apparel white dress. An acne treatment product called X Out sponsored the auction. For those of you familiar with the miracle product, Proactiv, from the same maker comes X Out, a new one-step pimple treatment. All I have to say, is I wish X Out was available when I was a teenager!!

Here's what I did to my white dress:

1. Bunched dress up and soaked black it with RIT Dye. It turned out more of a purple color.

2. Turned the dress inside out and pinned a piece of black cotton fabric to the chest area.

3. On a sewing machine, sewed an X shape through the dress and black fabric.

4. Trimmed all the black fabric outside the X.

5. Flipped dress right side out and trimmed the dress fabric inside the X.

5. Used fingers to fray the cut edges inside the X.

6. Lined up and pinned tons safety pins, of various sizes, through the black fabric in the X.

7. For the back of dress, folded back panel of dress vertically in half and marked a V with chalk.

8. Used a rotary cutter to cut one inch horizontal lines through both layers of fabric in V shape.

9. Opened up dress and stretched out each one inch strip to make the fabric curl.

10. Done. Wear it. Rock it.

The auction for the X Out dresses will go live on Ebay April 23. I hope you bid on mine so we can raise lots of money to stop young a-holes from abusing nice people—there is no need for bullying.