SCA: An Exercise In Repeated Failure

And now for a fun post! Warning:  I'm going to cuss in this one.  You'll see why.  

Sometimes things just don't go your way.  I love dyeing fabrics and clothing, but man, when dye goes wrong, it goes WRONG.  I had this "natural" colored (oatmeal colored) linen serk that I wanted to dye blue, and it took way more work than it really should have...mostly because I screwed up in the beginning. 

Here's where we started.  This "oatmeal" color is lovely, and correct for the period, but this tone looks AWFUL on my skin.  Every time I wore it, I looked ill.  No bueno.  

I selected a teal Rit dye, and a charcoal gray one.  Just a bit of each, and the gray was supposed to tone down the tealness of the teal and make it more of a plain blue.  According to the Rit recipe from the website, it should have happened that way. 

Except that I forgot to take into account the native color of the fabric, which was basically BROWN.  Brown + blue = more brown.  So effectively, the two colors cancelled each other out and all I added was gray.  So the dress came out...gray.  

So I bleached the fabric.  Twice.  The first time didn't accomplish anything at all; the second time returned the dress to more or less its original color.  

But I thought...I could go lighter.  

Bleach spots on the third time through.  Oops again.  And also, fuck.  

I tried again, with double the bleach the fourth time.  I was leery of doing it, because too much time in the bleach can start eroding the fabric.  Thankfully, throughout this process, THAT never happened, at least. 

After the third round with the bleach, I had achieved something that looked kind of like zombie flesh:  mostly chalky white, with some brown streaking and spotting.  Gross.  

But once the dress was dried, the spotting/streaking barely showed, so I thought maaaybe it might be ready to take dye now.  

Wary of using too much teal dye (and no gray this time!), I only put a couple of capfuls into the washing machine with my dress. 

Shit, it's green!  Like, candy mint Peeps green.  UGH.  

But the color came out even.  Hm. 

I decided to give up.  I threw the rest of my teal dye in to the washer, and a couple of capfuls of the gray, and let 'er rip, let the chips fall where they may.  I was sick of messing with this dress. 

To my surprise, the dress came out a light greenish blue - exactly the color I'd wanted to dye the dress in the first place!  

Finally! Yay!  The color is nice and even, maybe a touch dark around the side seams, but that's okay - that'll be hidden by an apron dress anyway.  

SO DONE WITH THIS DRESS.  Glad it turned out ok. 

The End.  

The Problem With Experiments...

Is that sometimes, they just come out all weird.

Lemme back up.

Remember the Ikea linen dress, that once was gray, got renovated, and then dyed purple?

This one. 

I wore it to Crown Tournament a few weeks ago, and on the way home from the event, my friends and I stopped Waffle House (a longtime road trip tradition of mine).  They had just mopped the bathrooms.  Raise your hand if you already know where this is going.

I thought I got my dress off the bathroom floor in time;  I grabbed it the second I smelled bleach...but it was too late.  When I got home I realized that nearly the entire hemline, and some of the front of the skirt were covered in huge, white blotches.  

Damn it. 

I considered spot-dyeing it, but I didn't want to end up with patches along the bottom that were dyed differently, or overlapped, or what have you.  So I opted to lighten the dress and re-dye the whole thing.  Since this purple was achieved with plain ol' Rit dye, I thought I'd give Rit's Color Remover a whirl, since I'd never used it before.  I barely worked.  When I dyed the dress purple originally, I had to do it twice, because the first time, it came out all blotchy.  The color remover, it seems, removed only the top layer of dye - the dress was back to being blotchy purple again.  Sigh. 

So I bleached the crap out of it, hoping that it wouldn't ruin the fabric.  Thankfully, it didn't.   Here it is wet: 

And dry, the bleaching process finished: 

I now have a very pale lavender dress, with yellow tapestry sleeve linings.  Also, all of the buttonholes remained the same color, because I used polyester thread, which didn't bleach.   o_0   The fabric is actually quite a lovely lavender, and it actually looks good on me - and I'd keep it, if the color were remotely even, but it's really, really not.  

I'll be dyeing the dress again tonight.  Wish me luck. 

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