The Dress 3/1/04: Slow Going I had enough wool and velveteen to cut a paned sleeve cap reminiscent of this dress by and unknown artist (Venetian, 1575). But I can't go further on this until I sew and dye the skirt and extra fabric. Stalled again. 3/22/04: What the??? Well, my record as the world's lamest dyer has not been broken! I finally had the time to try dyeing the silk for the skirt. I used Dylon cold water fiber reactive dyes which should have worked very well. Yeah, right... I put in 2 tins of Mexican Red, which were lovely but I wanted a dark red so I threw in 3/4 of a tin of black. That made the whole thing plum for some reason. So I threw in a bunch of yellow to counteract the purple hue. It started heading to brown but stopped just short as a sort of brick-plum-dusty-rose-whatever. I was supposed to leave it in there for an hour but I left it in for two, the rinsed and washed it. Not even close. I took the fabric to a dyeing expert I know and she said "oooooh no that's not right." She will be sending me some acid dye in something she calls Turkey Red that should do the trick. Let's hope so. This also leaves me to believe that the fiber content of this fabric is still somewhat of a mystery. Here's a pic with the bodice color on the left, the original baby pink on the right, and the weird dusty rose I cam up with. It's a little more ruddy colored in real life than in this pic, but you get the idea... 3/29/04: All problems can be fixed by shopping! The more I think about re-dying this skirt, then less I want to work on it, especially with two other lovely dresses to work on. I have to go buy 50 yards of trim for the PDSvN dress so I'll take swatches and see if I can find a red wool to make a new skirt. 2/7/05: a little progress! This has been an on-going hunt for a red fabric to make the skirt from. Matching reds is a bitch and I am the world's lamest dyer - a title that I have not broken in this long journey so far! LOL I finally found some red cotton that I thought would work. I got it home and in different light it was just a wee bit pale to satisfy me. I thought I would dye it *cough* but before I got around to it I found some red linen - at least it looked and felt like linen - on a remnant table for $1.99/yard. I bought the 3 yards they had left (54" wide) and thought it was great. I burned it when I got home and, lucky me, it really IS linen! This might work out after all! Well, it was also a hair too light so I bought Dylon cold water reactive dyes in both green and red. I thought I'd give the old complimentary color thang a try. Well, I made my dye-bath and dunked in my swatches. The red didn't do much but the olive looked great! It darkened up the red fabric beautifully - too well, in fact after 30 minutes, so I tried another swatch for just 10 minutes and it came out perfect. The cotton came out ok but the linen was the clear winner. So, I made up the whole dye-bath, put in my linen for 10 minutes, and took it out and washed it. Too soon! The dye bath was weaker than my little sample batch so it didn't take as much dye as my swatch. Then I had some scarlet Rit under the sink so I just threw it in there for a while. Now it's perfect. I've never been really happy with how quickly Rit fades, but since the original red isn't too far off I think this will wear pretty well. Bodice Progress I've had the bodice cut and sewn for the longest time. I was happy to have been able to add little red velvet welts along all the seams. It stiffened them up nicely. I finally got around to hand sewing the neck opening closed so now all it needs is eyelet holes for lacing. I'm considering doing these by hand, as it really wouldn't take any more time than covering grommets. I shudder just thinking about it - boooooring! Anyway, here's a pic of the bodice before I got the neck sewn up, but at least you can see the embroidered red wool it's made of, and the left-over velvet trim from German gown. 2/25/05: a concept, sort of... Well, I messed around in Photoshop with an illustration scanned from the Herbert Norris book, and pics of my fabric and came up with this. It's a start for explaining what I have in my head, and what I have cut out already, but it leaves off a couple of details that I just didn't want to bother taking the time to add. The gold underskirt will really be a petticoat - the same one I made for my Venetian dress. The overskirt will be closed and have a stripe of embroidered wool down the front and around the bottom. It will have paned cap sleeves sewn to the bodice but I haven't decided what to do with the lower 3/4 yet. Anyway, it's a start.. 3/18/05: Have I told you lately... I hate handwork!?!? LOL! Ok, not really but I hate doing hand-bound eyelets, and with a side-back-laced bodice it's twice as many eyelets as something laced in one place. *sigh* The worst part is the migration of the holes as I poke them with the awl. Now, to be fair, I cut this out over a year ago before I got all my scrummy linen so it's lined in cotton sheeting with an interlining of cotton duck. These are both very tightly woven, so when I poke the eyelet hole with the awl it doesn't make a big enough hole. When I give it a good shove to make it bigger, it rips some threads. Not a big deal strength-wise since it will all be bound by the blanket stitch around the hole, but there's no way to control which WAY it rips, so my evenly MARKED holes do not end up evenly SPACED holes. It's rather a mess. I've decided not to care about it since there's nothing I can do about it now. When I get my film developed, I'm sure you'll be amused at how lame it looks. LOL! I also got the red linen skirt cut out. Now I'm debating whether and how much of the trim to apply while it's flat. I think I can do the "racing stripe" down the front but I'll have to wait on the hem guard until I can hem it... 4/25/05: Some days everything just goes wrong... And the bias trim doesn't like to cleave to the straight grain of the base fabric. I put it all back in the drawer for when I'm in a better mood. ggggrrrr 5/22/06: small steps for baby feet I tried to finish this done for the 2006 faire run but just didn't have the time. I did manage to get the trim onto the skirt panels, the sleeve heads cut out and planned properly. I estimate I can finish this dress in maybe 10 more hours. Now, where to find those hours... | 
