Honey, I UNshrunk the Shirt!!

Yes, like most other women I know, I am a  bit of Pinterest addict.  Maybe more than a bit.   Aside from desperate attempts emulate the style of such persons as Alexa Chung or the hairstyle of Emma Watson (and failing miserably), I don't really try things on Pinterest.  But when I stumbled (wait, wrong website) across a pin claiming to have a method of unshrinking clothing, I felt I should try it.  A couple of weeks previously I had made the mistake of wandering into Forever21 on my day off....and came out with a great sweater that was on the half off of clearance rack, making it a whopping $5, and a cute stripey shirt for $9.  The next laundry day, I remembered to air dry the sweater, but into the nice and toasty dryer went the ill-fated stripey top.

Of course, my perfectly fitted top was now two sizes two small.  I may have been able to wear it when I was ten, or possibly even fifteen when belly shirts were all the rage.  Sadly, my $9 steal could only now be worn over another shirt, or never again.

Enter Pinterest.  The directions were to soak the clothing in warm water with baby shampoo, they lay out on a towel and stretch (see full directions here: http://www.onegoodthingbyjillee.com/2012/10/how-to-resize-shrunken-clothes.html ).  I figured that baby shampoo sample bottles were cheap, and as baby shampoo is essentially mild soap, it couldn't damage poor stripey shirt any further. 

I took a before picture, just in case it did work, and then filled up my bathroom sink with water and Johnson's baby shampoo.  As a side note, I will mention that the scent of plain old baby shampoo wafting from my bathroom was pleasant, and made me quite happy.   After a good long soak (during which I washed my new black jeans inside out in cold water elsewhere in the apartment complex), I rolled the shirt in a towel for about five minutes to get rid of excess water, then laid it out on a clean towel on the floor and commenced stretching.   I stretched if manually for several minutes, then got some old hardbound books to hold it in place.  After about twenty minutes of that I restretched manually and left it to finish drying.  Bonus: the top smelled like baby too.  :)  Here are the happy results:

The shirt stretched a good 4'', which may have been a liiiitle more than I should have gone, but I'm not complaining.  I have another sweater that shrunk several sizes as well, and I'm planning on unshrinking it when I get some free time.

Gasp!  Something on Pinterest worked!