2 shirts for $80 · Mix any design, color, or size
Dyeing By Design
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Dyeing By Design · Hand bleached in Brunswick, MaineOne of a kind.
By design.

A Sumac shirt in Black Spruce: real sumac fronds laid on the shirt and bleached around

Sumac on Black Spruce· 17 colors to pick from

Real botanicals, custom stencils, and hand-cut graphics on heavyweight cotton. Bleached by hand, front and back — never printed, never duplicated.

Shop the lineupStart a custom design

The lineup

Botanicals & stencils. One-of-a-kind art on heavyweight cotton.

Every design in every color, finished front and back. $7 flat rate shipping anywhere in the US. Made to order, one piece at a time — can take 1 to 2 weeks depending on how many orders are ahead of you.

Made on

Hanes Beefy-T

6.1 oz100% ring spun cottonrelaxed fit

The Botanical Line

Real leaves laid by hand — sumac, cedar, fern, and whatever the season drops.

3 designs

Sumac hand-bleached shirt by Dyeing By DesignThe original

Sumac

$50.00

Staghorn sumac · Rhus typhina

Feathered fronds, deep amber burn. The original.

Cedar hand-bleached shirt by Dyeing By DesignNew

Cedar

$50.00

Northern white cedar · Thuja occidentalis

Fanned sprays that branch like frost. The North Woods one.

Fern hand-bleached shirt by Dyeing By Design

Fern

$50.00

Ostrich fern · Matteuccia struthiopteris

Lacy, layered, almost too fine to believe it's bleach.

The Graphic & Stencil Line

Custom cut shapes, celestial icons, wildlife silhouettes, and bold geometric work.

Any shape you can picture — a logo, a silhouette, a bold graphic — can be made as a 1-of-1.

Start a custom design

The colors, worn

Every color has a place.

A woman laughing on a boardwalk across a flooded cranberry bog, in a Cranberry sumac shirtCranberryShop this color →A bearded man in a knit cap and a Black Spruce sumac shirt on a granite shore beside a wooden canoe, spruce across the waterBlack SpruceShop this color →A woman in a Lupine sumac shirt standing in a field of lupines above the seaLupineShop this color →A young man in a Deep Harbor sumac shirt on a wharf beside lobster traps and buoys, boats in the harbor behind himDeep HarborShop this color →A woman with silver hair in a Sunflower sumac shirt, standing in a field of sunflowersSunflowerShop this color →A man in a Sea Glass sumac shirt on a cobble beach, holding a handful of sea glassSea GlassShop this color →A woman in a Balsam sumac shirt walking a misty trail through fir woods with a thermosBalsamShop this color →An older man in a Goldenrod sumac shirt walking through goldenrod in front of an old red barnGoldenrodShop this color →
See the whole lookbook

Wicked Rare

Side pieces, already made.

A leaf Corey found once, a stencil he cut for fun, a color off the beaten path. Finished and on the shelf. Some come back around, some don't.

Mugwort, a hand bleached shirt by Dyeing By DesignReady to ship

Mugwort

$50.00

Common mugwort · Artemisia vulgaris

Cranberry · size M · 1 on the shelf

Fig, a hand bleached shirt by Dyeing By DesignReady to ship

Fig

$50.00

Fig Leaf · Ficus lyrata

North Woods · size XL · 1 on the shelf

See everything Wicked Rare
A stack of folded hand bleached shirts in a rainbow of blank colors

The blanks

Every design, every blank.

The bleach burns every color its own way. Black goes gold, reds go peach, greens go tan, blues go pale. Same leaf, a whole new shirt, so pick the one that feels like yours.

Now in seventeen blanksBlack SpruceGraniteDeep HarborBlueberrySea SmokeTide PoolSea GlassBalsamSaplingLichenGoldenrodSunflowerEmberRosehipCranberryChokecherryLupine
Pick a design

Recent work

Fresh off the line.

Real shirts, real light, no studio. What came out of the shop lately.

A pink tee with bleached leaf designs held up in front of a tall stack of shirts in bright colors, on a deck at the edge of the woods

Pink on top of the pile

The rest of the batch right behind it.

Leaves laid flat across a red tee and a navy tee on a dark wooden deck, ready for bleach

Laid out, ready to spray

Leaves flat on red and navy. Whatever sits under a leaf keeps its color.

Close up of sumac leaf shadows and bleach speckle on a lime tee

How it's made

A leaf or a blade. Then the bleach.

  1. 1Draft and gather. We pick real leaves from the Maine woods — sumac, cedar, fern, etc. — or cut a custom stencil by hand from a clean vector design.
  2. 2Lay and spray. Everything is arranged on heavyweight cotton — stencils held flat for crisp edges, leaves laid flat for soft organic shadows — then carefully misted with bleach. The exposed fabric lightens to whatever that blank burns to; the design keeps its ground.
  3. 3Fix, wash, and wear. The bleach is neutralized in hydrogen peroxide so it stops working on the cotton, then the piece is washed and dried. What's left is burned into the fibers — permanent, soft, and yours alone. It will never crack, peel, or fade.
The full story + care

1-of-1 custom orders

Have a concept, logo, or local leaf in mind?

A stencil of your business logo. A favorite graphic. The maple at the family camp, or leaves from the yard you grew up in. Send us your leaves, logos, or design ideas and we'll build the stencil or lay the flora for a piece that's strictly yours.

Start a custom design
The artist behind Dyeing By Design

The maker

One artist. Two hands. Every shirt.

Born and raised in Brunswick, Maine — working since the paper route days, now turning bleach, blades, and a lifetime of drive into wearable one of ones.

Meet the artist

Limited drops

Small batches. Numbered. Gone.

A few times a year we run a numbered batch — different blanks, seasonal leaves, new stencil cuts, new colorways. They don't last. Get on the list and you'll hear first.