SCA: Side Quest: Sprezzatura Viking Outfit

While I waited for the mail to bring me the final piece of my big hand sewing project, I started something on the side to keep me busy: 

So, in my SCA household, (La Compagnie della Sprezzatura), we each have a set of clothing in our preferred style in the company colors, with or without appliquéd device, that we all wear together on certain days. Lots of styles, but the same colors - it’s a neat effect. 

This is our company heraldry - I don’t know the correct heraldic terms for it, but it’s yellow and blue with a chalice and white (silver?) star floating above it.  I made a table runner after this device  in 2023: 

This outfit is mostly machine-sewn, which was kind of fun after all the hand sewing I’ve been doing the past several months.  I did hem both pieces by hand, and finished the neckline of the yellow dress and applied all of the trim pieces by hand.

The yellow dress was a lightweight “chambray” linen, meaning it had a yellow warp and a white weft. I overdyed the whole thing with yellow to cover up the white threads. It’s not exactly the shade of yellow I was hoping for, but I got this stuff on clearance for $12/yard, which is unreasonably cheap for 100% linen, so I’m happy with it as is I think. 

The blue dress is a medium-weight linen (about 9oz I guess?) which was given to me by a friend as a thank-you gift for helping them with a project. The teal trim on the top is scrap sari silk, and the zigzag tablet woven band is one I made last year and had in my stash (cotton crochet thread).  

I don’t plan on doing any appliqué on this outfit with the company heraldry - the colors are going to have to suffice.  I know a lot of people like to put big fancy appliqués on viking clothing, but it isn’t documentably period for this type of outfit — and neither is this vivid ultramarine blue or bright-ass yellow, I know, but we all pick our battles, LOL. 

So now I have a Sprezzatura outfit, hooray! I’m all set for our next “uniform” day, whenever that is (probably November). 

Regency: Blue “Elinor” Dress

After all the work I spent March and April doing on that blue Norse dress, I was ready for a Regency palate-cleanser to reset my brain. 

In February I bought two more packs of IKEA’s “Matilda” sheer cotton curtains on clearance that I planned to use for a new  gown, but at the time I wasn’t exactly sure what to do with it - until I watched the 1995 Sense & Sensibility for the hundredth time and saw this: 

Yes, that’s a photograph of my television, lol. I THOUGHT that I couldn’t find a pic of this dress anywhere online, so I watched the miniseries again (oh no!) and took this picture. It turns out that the reason I couldn’t find it was because this is a green dress, but in this particular scene it looks so perfectly gray-blue, like a stormy sky, and THAT is what I wanted. 

bodice front before dyeing

I used the Simplicity S8941 for this one, just like the white one I made in 2022. I love the way the dress feels, and the way it fits me; this time I made the skirt a bit longer (the 2022 dress was too short and I had to add a panel at the bottom), and I made the sleeves full length this time, which took a bit of re-drafting. Most of the dress is machine-sewn; although I did finish the hems and sleeve cuffs by hand. 

Once it was finished, I dyed the whole thing. I opted to dye it after I made it because I wanted the white cotton twill tape drawstrings to be dyed as well, and I didn’t feel like trying to dye them separately - I didn’t want to risk messing up the color. I used Rit Dye’s Pearl Grey and Evening Blue (2:1), with a couple of capfuls of Teal thrown in to warm up the color just a bit. I’m super happy with the way the color came out: 

The color didn’t come out exactly 100% the way I was envisioning; but I LOVE the color I ended up with SO MUCH.

All done! This was pretty quick - it only took me about two days to sew; the dyeing process was done in the washing machine and took about half an hour and then a complete wash cycle to finish it off. 

I think for my next Regency trick I’ll make myself a new hat. I’ve always wanted Marianne’s big hat from the 2005 S&S with Kate Winslet. More S&S! Yay! Stay tuned… 

SCA: War of the Rams

 I’ve been away from the blog for a little while, sorry about that. My brother died, and then after Kingdom A&S I just didn’t have anything going on and I fell into kind of a funk there for a while. I’ve been to a couple of events in the past month, and had a decent enough time, but my heart hasn’t really been in it. 

At the moment I’m preparing for War of the Rams (formerly known as BAM), and I've been trying to keep busy to distract myself from life and keep my sights on good things in the future. 

I made over an old plain loose dress this week - dyed it and changed the edge binding, so that I’d have something casual to wear around camp at BAM: 

My male tunic blew a seam in the wash, which I discovered while I was affixing some new tablet woven trim to the neckline - it’s irreparable, unfortunately (or fortunately maybe, as I’d been planning to replace that tunic for months now anyway), so this wine-colored dress is what I’ll wear instead. 

I’ve also spent the last few weeks working up a bit of a joke  to bring out at the event which I’m hoping will get some laughs. More on that after I get back. 

For the time being I’m done with SCA stuff and BAM prep; the event is in a week and a half, and I’m working on redecorating my bedroom at the moment (sewing pillows and crocheting a throw blanket).  

More when I get back from the event - see you soon. 

SCA: Some New Additions to the Iron Age Peplos Outfit

Some updates to the new peplos outfit: 

• I overdyed the brown peplos to darken the color. It’s subtle, but I like it a lot better 
• I created some new jewelry to wear with it 
• I wove a new belt 

The jewelry is two parts: an amber and carnelian necklace I made from stash parts and a broken amber necklace; and 

A string of bronze colored chains to suspend between the shoulder brooches. They’re the wrong kind of chain, but it’s a good place to start! 

I finished the belt this morning, and I’m in love with it. It’s 8/2 cotton in blue, gold, and navy, with wrapped and braided ends. 

It also just happens to be in my household colors, which I didn’t realize until I was nearly done. Happy accident! :) 

SCA: An Iron Age Peplos Outfit (First Draft)

Here's something new for me: I made an Iron Age Peplos outfit for myself.  I really loved wearing my Roman at Warlord - it was so cool and breezy and comfortable - and I wanted something that would feel similar but still be somewhat adjacent to the styles I normally wear (similar/adjacent cultures, earlier time period).  

the Huldremose peplos

This style was fairly long-lived, and widespread throughout England and northern Europe.  It's known from several Anglo-Saxon burials, and just a TON of early Medieval artwork in which the peplos is depicted often worn over a long-sleeved under dress and under a large wrapped cloak. There's a remarkably complete wool peplos from Huldremose in Denmark (Huldremose II, not related to the "Huldremose Woman"); you also see the style in later Finnish costume from the 11th century (the "Eura dress" outfit).

My peplos is made from linen, because (a) I wanted it to be lightweight and good for hot late-summer weather, and (b) linen was what I had.  In fact, someone recently gave me a piece of linen that she didn't need for anything recently, and that's what I used.  

It started out as a light lavender color, but I dyed it to WHAT COLOR you see in the pic at the top. I actually tried to dye it with black first, hoping it would come out sort of a charcoal color - but I had forgotten that Rit's black dye is actually a deep purple, and so it came out...purple.  

Oops. It turned out it was pretty easy to fix - I treated it with Rit Color Remover, which worked remarkably well  it actually removed the “black” dye as well as most of the original lavender color, and I ended up with a sort of pale band-aid pinky peach color. The stuff smells just AWFUL, though. Anyway, I dyed the fabric again with brown and charcoal gray, and ended up with the sort of chocolate-ice-cream brown color in the first pic up top. 

Anyway, in the picture above my peplos is shown over a light blue linen “Eura” style underdress, which I made many years ago and never get to wear.. A peplos is normally folded from the side across the body and left open on the other side; because of the size and shape of my fabric piece, I had to split it into a front and a back, so it's open on both sides.  There was no sewing involved aside from hemming the edges, which I did by hand. 

It's pinned at the shoulders with a pair of round bronze brooches that I've had for years. They were my first Viking brooches, although I don't know anything about the style - I was told they were "early Viking" but I don't know anything more than that about them, or even if that's true.  But they work here for the look.  

I've seen many reenactors string beads between these brooches like you see in later Viking clothing, and sometimes people wear a long unadorned chain between them as well.  I didn't have any chain on hand that didn't look super shiny and modern, and I didn't have enough beads to make a swag for  my brooches, so for the time being I'm using a few of my leftover homemade beads on a plain cord as a necklace instead. 

The belt is the same tablet-woven one I wear with my viking dresses (not a period design, but that's an issue for another post - and seeing this outfit out together I think I’m going to make a new belt just for this outfit anyway); from it hangs an apron which is a darker blue linen remnant left over from another project. I think the blue color is too strong for the other pieces; I may replace it with a gray one or something else, I’m not sure yet. 

All in all, I'm pleased with the way this came out - it’s a pretty good “first draft.”  It needs work, but it was fun to put together and I’m looking forward to making it better. 

SCA: Footwear Update

In February I purchased a pair of Hedeby-style leather shoes online, and have altered them just a bit since I got them. 

This is what they look like now: 

They were okay the way they arrived from the shop, although they were a bit too tight to get into - I had to undo some of the stitching in order to open them up enough to allow for my weirdly high instep.  

I also wove new laces for them to replace the plain leather ties they came with; and this week I dyed them a dark brown color and re-waterproofed them.  They were...orange...before...

 

after replacing the ties and altering the 
fit a bit, but before dyeing

ORANGE!  The new color is MUCH better.  

These shoes came with hard rubber soles on them, and I put nice thick gel insoles on the inside, so they walk really well outdoors, even on gravel roads.  Hooray for comfy feet! Like my old shoes (may they rest in peace - they lasted me nearly five years!), these are a unisex historical style, so I can wear them with whatever I want. 

a selection of Viking-age shoes at the Haithabu Museum

Above is a group of shoes displayed at the Haithabu (Hedeby) Museum in Germany.  The second-from-left on the top row is the same style as my new ones.  Note that the original shoes do NOT have a tablet-woven lace, hehe.  I know, it's not historically accurate, but I wanted them to be a little prettier. 

:P 

 

SCA: Men's Viking Outfit: Dyeing All the Things

The other day I posted a couple of pictures of me in a couple of my Viking outfits.   When I first saw the picture of me in my men's Viking outfit, I realized two things:  (a) that was the first time I'd ever actually SEEN my men's Viking outfit on me from an outside perspective, and (b) I didn't like it at all.  

Most of my (women's) Viking outfits are in varying shades of blue and green, and I like them all.  But each women's outfit is primarily one color:  the color of the apron dress, backed by a white or pale gray under dress, with coordinating accessories (hats, bags, etc) in complementary shades of blues and/or greens. Very simple.  

The man's outfit, however, was made up of several pieces in varying light blues and light greens that were worn all together,  and the different colors were NOT working well with each other.  Overall the whole outfit looked...kind of Smurfy.  And that's not good. 

 

before

The Problems

1.  Multiple shades of blue and green that don't all go together very well

2.  Main body of tunic is a really weird green that is probably not a "period color"  which was bothering me

3.  I never really cared for the big trapezoidal neck yoke and the sleeve cuff pieces.  I don't like the shape of the yoke at all.  

(Please ignore the violently turquoise socks - those are being replaced by new socks in natural colors).  

The Solutions

THE TUNIC 

I removed all the trim, visible top-stitching, and the blue yoke and cuff pieces. Then, I re-hemmed all the edges by hand, and dyed the whole thing.  After that, I applied some new trim pieces to the neckline, sleeve cuffs, and the lower hem of the tunic.  

The new color of the tunic (right)  is much better.  I used a royal blue and teal to achieve this shade of blue, which is one that would be achievable with natural dyes like woad, and therefore makes the tunic a bit more period-looking than it had been before.  

 The trim fabric is made from an old linen apron dress that didn't fit me anymore; I also couched a twisted cord in coordinating colors to the edge of the trim fabric.  I don't wear this rust/orange color as a primary color, because it looks awful on me in large amounts; but I really love the way the rust/blue set each other off.

PANTS, SOCKS, AND WININGAS

The linen pants, which started out a sort of "light navy" color (sort of darkish grayish blue, shown on the left of this picture), were dyed with a deep brown, which rendered them a sort of charcoal gray, which grounds the more intensely colored tunic nicely.  

I dyed the winingas with a bit of the same brown and some charcoal gray.  They started out a sort of baby-blue, and the warp threads in the wool remained blue, while the weft threads dyed a deep charcoal-brown, and I REALLY like the effect.  

The End Result

after

Here's what the finished outfit looks like: 

This is a much more balanced color scheme, with a single intensely-colored piece grounded by dark neutral tones. I feel like the colors here are much more natural and realistic-looking - these browns and grays and blue are colors which are achievable with natural dyes, and might have been worn in period.   I'm immensely happy with the way the dyeing turned out. (The tunic actually looks more blue than this in person, I could NOT get it to come out right on my camera).  

I'm also pretty stoked that I managed to do this entire project for only about $20 for just the fabric dye.  That's far less than half of what I would have spent on just the linen for a new tunic!  

    

     

Just for fun, here's a pic of with my blue wool cloak. 

Bonus: new hat! 

Whew, done!  For now. 

Regency: Teal Velveteen Pelisse

Behold:  a finished velveteen pelisse for winter wear!  

Last fall I acquired a huge stack of velveteen Ikea curtain panels from my local neighborhood swap group.  I knew right away I wanted to make a pelisse out of it. The fabric is heavy and warm, but not TOO heavy - perfect for our relatively mild central Texas winter weather. 

It would be a nifty addition to my Regency wardrobe, I thought, but more than that, I was in dire need of a long winter coat that was affordable - so I knew I wanted to make one, but I could never find the right fabric and pattern for it.  Yes, I absolutely plan to wear this in "real life" as my regular winter coat! 

left: fashion plate from Ackerman's;
right: design inspiration from Laughing Moon

This fashion plate, and this gown, were my first inspirations.  I loved the ruffles around the neckline and the big tie in the front of both, so I decided to use my Laughing Moon Spencer pattern (#129) for the bodice and sleeves, since it already has the shaping and design on the bodice that I wanted. 

I used the skirts from my Reconstructing History round gown pattern as a guide for the width and length of the skirt panels. 

dyeing the velveteen

The first problem was the color of the velveteen curtain panels:  they were bright aqua, which - no. Too bright and cheerful for me.  

Fortunately, they're 100% cotton, so they dyed pretty easily with Rit dye.  I used a 2:2:1 mixture of dark green, teal, and charcoal gray,  and came up with this lovely deep muted spruce green color.  (Okay, it's TEAL. Rit dye's formula charts call this "Blue Spruce Green," but it's totally teal).  

 

inside ties and hand-finishing

The pelisse is lined in a sage green cotton fabric that started life as a duvet cover I had sitting around not being used. Here you can see the ties I placed inside the bodice to help hold the thing together - I didn't want to rely on the belt/sash to do the job on its own.  The ties will help keep everything aligned properly when I wear it. 

The problem with dyeing the fabric was that I originally did it in two separate batches.  I measured carefully, and used the exact same dye on both batches...and yet, they still came out slightly different colors - one batch was a bit greener, and one batch was a bit bluer. 

So, after I finished the pelisse, I overdyed it again to bring the colors back in together.  The lining dyed, as well, and now it matches the velveteen fabric. 

bodice back

Since I do plan to wear this coat mundanely (i.e. not as a costume, but as regular daily wear), I made a few modifications to the pattern to help it be more wearable - the inside ties are one. 

I also lowered the hem of the bustline by 3" to accommodate a "normal" modern bustline.  It still fits fine when I'm corseted, but since I mostly won't be wearing this with a corset, I wanted it to conform to my "regular" bust shape when I'm wearing it to the office, for example.    

I added hidden side-seam pockets to the skirts as well.  Bitches need pockets! I generally don't carry a purse - just my phone which is in a wallet case, and my keys, and I needed somewhere to stash them. 

I also added belt loops to the side seams of the waistline, to help keep the belt/sash in place. 

before hemming the bottom

Altogether, this pelisse took me about 12 1/2 hours (over the course of 7 days) to construct and finish.  Most of it is sewn on the machine, although I did do all the finishing - anything that's visible from the outside - by hand.  Because it's so long, and there's so much fabric, it's surprisingly heavier than I thought it would be, and it IS very warm.  It'll make an excellent top layer and windbreak in winter weather this year. 

Thankfully, our winters are generally pretty mild, usually averaging about 40-50º most of the time, and only getting down into the 20s-30s for a couple of weeks in January or February; so this pelisse didn't have to be very heavy - it's mostly just a windbreak and an extra layer. With a sweater underneath and a scarf at the neck, it'll be just fine for the weather here.  

Things I would change if I had to do this again: 

(1) the sleeves are a teensy bit too long. They're lovely, but I worry about them being in the way while driving.  

(2) the back of the bodice and the shoulders are very fitted, and I worry that they won't accommodate more than a very thin shirt underneath - I won't be able to wear sweaters with this thing.  (Good impetus to lose a bit of weight before this winter!) 

(3) The belt loops are laughably too big. I should have made them half the size I did; but it's okay, I doubt anyone will notice or care. 

SCA: 3 Things: Random Viking Kit Stuff

This is such a small thing, but it's a huge accomplishment for me!  I've been learning how to inkle weave...very...slowly...and without much forward progress.  I assumed my work was wonky because I was new, but that I would get the hang of it and it would stop being bumpy and fuzzy with practice.  I was using scrap yarn for this, which is...bumpy and fuzzy.  A weaving friend of mine told me it was likely the yarn's fault, and not mine - so I decided to try it with a new material. 

This time, I used #10 cotton crochet thread, and it came out MUCH more evenly and smoothly, thank goodness!  I made a pair of short (about 1y each), thin (3/8") garters to wrap around my winingas when I dress as a male Viking, to mimic some pictures I've seen online from some of the European reenactment groups.  I really liked the look, and since my raven clasps broke, I had nothing to secure my winingas with.  (Actually, the red garters are purely decorative, since I tuck my winingas in at the bottom).  (Also, I don’t know how period the whole winingas-and-garters thing is. I’ve seen this done as part of the Finnish Iron Age dress recreation (the “Eura dress,” 6-7th century), but I don’t know  if the style carried over into say, Sweden or Denmark, or for how long a time period that style was worn). 

*

After the little raven clasps from my winingas broke (the hook snapped off of one), I made the broken one into a piece of jewelry - it's now a pendant for my Viking "festoon" necklaces: 

Now I have three raven pendants for my necklaces: this one, a brass Rus Borre style raven; a silver Rus-style pewter raven that I got as a site token from Candlemas; and a modern silver stylized raven pendant that my BFF got me for my birthday many years ago.  All the ravens! (I also have a pretty nifty knotwork raven tattoo, but sadly it doesn't show with all my garb on.  Oh, well).  Anyway, the clasp on this is totally modern, but I use them on all my raven pendants, and they don't really show because they're hidden between beads.  

*

Also, I dyed my male Viking tunic with some leftover dark green RIT dye, because the colors were grossing me out. The greige and blue look was nice, but I just look awful in beiges and warm grays.  So now the tunic (and outfit) is green and dark blue, and I like it much better. 

More soon! 

SCA: Return of the Cotehardie : A Dress Makeover

 I’m in love with my new 14thC bycocket, but I had nothing to wear with it to the next event. It’s been years since I busted out ye olde cotehardie - and while I am no longer young and thin, I’ve seen plenty of larger women rock a cote and look fabulous doing it, and so I shall be among them. 

So. 

I took a ride through all of my old costumes, and I found one that actually *almost* fit. Luckily, it had HUGE like 2” seam allowances from old alterations taken to make it smaller in previous years, and I was able to take almost all of it out and re-shape the dress so that it fit me again. Success!! 

The next problem was that it was pea green. It was a neat color, but totally the wrong tone for my skin - it makes me look really pink, and not in a good way. More like in a carbon monoxide poisoning way. So I overdyed it with Rit’s dark green, and voila - it came out a dark, warm, sort of hunter green: 

I order to spiff this dress up, and because the old polyester thread didn’t take the dye, I: 

• removed all the visible hand and machine stitching and replaced it with hand stitching in the correct color 
• removed the machined buttonholes and replaced them with hand stitched buttonholes 
• removed the buttons and re-sewed them with dark green thread, since for some strange reason I had  originally attached them with orange jeans thread (see pic above)
• removed the neckline binding and re-stitched it by hand, repairing a rip in the binding in the process

With the stitching and dyeing out of the way, it was time to make some new sleeves for this dress - it has half sleeves on it with long pendants, but I had no dress to wear underneath it. So I made a pair of half sleeves out of a blue cotton drapery fabric I had on hand, which I basted into the insides of the green short sleeves: 

 I also made a “medieval sports bra” sort of under-bodice thing out of the same fabric to wear underneath.  I had no modern or period contraption to make my bust look the appropriate shape and placement for this dress, and the dress itself, being unlined linen, would stretch out of shape as soon as it warmed up and not hold me correctly without supporting undergarments. So I made basically the sleeveless top half of a cotehardie out of the same fabric as the sleeves, which will support me, bring my waist in a little,  smooth out my back, and - along with the half sleeves - make it look like I’m wearing two layered dresses: 

All put together, it goes a little something like this: 

Bonus:  along with this dress and the blue bycocket I trimmed up last week, I made some new jewelry to go with it.  I had a purple and silver costume piece (plastic and pewter) which was badly tarnished and the plastic setting was chipped in a couple of places, so I took the whole thing apart and put the beads on new gold metal, and painted the plastic centerpiece setting with gold leafing paint to make it gold:  

Tada!  Now I just need somewhere to wear this.  I'm posting this in the hopes that nobody I know is reading it, because I want this to be kind of a surprise - I've been a Viking ever since I came back to the SCA in 2018, and whenever I wear this ensemble will be the first time I've worn anything but Viking since then.  I can't wait to wear my new hat and dress!  :) 

SCA: A Woven Hedeby Bag

 Had enough Hedeby bags yet?  Me, either.  Here's one that's a bit different: 

This one is woven of yarn.  I saw one made of naalbinding a couple of months ago, and decided I needed one.  I do not naalbind - I've tried multiple times, but I just CANNOT get the trick of it.  It's infuriating.  

I do, however, crochet.  After looking into the various naalbinding stitches that have been identified from extant finds, I found that a herringbone/chevron crochet stitch (a modified half-double stitch) approximates the Mammen stitch from Finland fairly well - you can find more info about that stitch, and lots of other info about naalbinding here: https://www.en.neulakintaat.fi/30

Mammen stitch example pic from  https://www.en.neulakintaat.fi/30

The crochet herringbone stitch was a bit tricky to learn; I learned from watching this YouTube video.  Here's a closeup of what my herringbone stitch looks like, for comparison to the above picture of naalbinding.  It's very similar, I think enough to pass: 

crochet herringbone stitch

I made a rectangle of about 20", and folded it in half and sewed the sides closed to make a square-ish bag about 9.5-10".  (I used a single chain stitch on the inside/wrong side to sew up the sides from the inside, then turned it right-side out).

The bag was made from bright green acrylic yarn (Caron Simply Soft in "Pistachio"), because that's what I had on hand at the time I decided to try this project.  After the basic rectangle was made, I over-dyed the whole thing with a dark blue Rit dye made for synthetic materials, because the original green was a bit too loud and bright for me.  The resulting color is a darker, more muted green, and I really like it.  

I did not line the bag with fabric or anything, because the weave of the herringbone stitch was so thick and close that I didn't feel it needed a lining.  

I made the handles out of a very thin scrap oak plank.  This time, rather than a curvy Hedeby design, I used the pointy Birka handle design - because I wanted something a bit different, but also because I thought the zigzag shape of the handles would look neat with the zigzag-looking herringbone stitch.   After cutting, shaping, and sanding, I finished the handles by applying a thin dark brown Minwax stain ("Special Walnut") and a coat of Polycrylic to seal the handles.  

I am NOT happy with the handles at all.  I have so far cut out my handles with my jigsaw, but this oak plank was too thin to support the stress of being worked with such a heavy tool, so I used only hand tools - namely, an old, rusted, dull coping saw and hacksaw, neither of which did a good job.  I messed up cutting one end of one handle so badly that I had to cut the other handle to match it so the error wouldn't be quite as obvious, but this meant I didn't have room on the handles to drill holes for a carrying strap.  So we'll call this my Hedeby Clutch, LOL.  

Why a woven yarn bag?  Why not? No actual bags like this have survived; all we have are the wooden handles, and contemporary/earlier Sami bags of a similar design to guide our guesses as to what the bags  may have looked like.  They could have been fabric, yarn, leather, who knows?  This was just a fun little experiment for me.  

Mistakes in the handles aside, I like the way this project came out overall, and I'll definitely do it again.  Coronation is this weekend; now I have a new thing to show my friends when I go.  :) 

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.