Changing It Up

Just trying for some normalcy in these crazy times...

Like a lot of other sew-ers I have a stash of fabric. Some of it is newer, some of it is gently aged. All of it was purchased because I liked it and saw a need for it in my wardrobe, and all of it was bought with the idea that it suited me in terms of color. And then -- I decided to stop covering the gray in my hair and let Mother Nature have her way. And suddenly all those warm, earthy colors that suited my dark rusty brown hair looked really bad with the silver that framed my face. Arghh! 

The nicer fabrics may find new homes, or perhaps be suitable for non-wardrobe uses, but I've been using some of the more ordinary fabric to make 'practice' garments in new patterns in order to work out fit issues.  Useful, but still -- I felt bad that I was not using them for their intended purpose.  What to do? Well, in my case -- get out the dyepot!

The first fabric shown was sold as a cotton shirting.  It is (in natural daylight) a pale golden yellow on white background with thin black stripes.

Better with an aquamarine over-dye, but still not exactly what I wanted.

Let's try something darker -- indigo (the color name, not the dye plant!)

That's what I want -- a deeper color without any warm overtones. In real life the blue is more evident -- this pic is much grayer than it is. By the way, the aquamarine overdye shown in the original pic was only done on a swatch -- not the full yardage. So, the indigo was not on top of the original color and an aquamarine overdye.  The top, which you're only seeing a small portion of -- is Courtney by StyleArc.

I also threw in some seersucker yardage. This was a medium brown stripe on a white background.

Now we're talkin'!  This fabric took up the dye exactly as I'd hoped.  The brown stripes are now a darker shade of indigo and the white stripes a lighter shade.

I did the dyeing in my top loader washing machine and used regular old Rit dye (liquid). Followed the instructions on their website, with one exception -- I did not put the dye solution down the dispenser. Instead I put that (and the salt solution) into the tub after filling it with water, then let it agitate for a couple of minutes to insure proper mixing before adding my fabric. There are specialty dyes out there for different types of fibers and I'm sure they do their job well.  In my case, I went with what was readily available and relatively inexpensive since it wasn't critical that I get a precise result. As always -- YMMV.