Long, long ago, before I understood the finer points of historical accuracy in fabrics, I once had a lovely piece of heavy darkdark blue linen. It was soooo nice, so I made my very first all-hand-sewn kirtle out of it. I wore it for a year or so and was very happy. Then I learned some stuff and I realized that I really shouldn't have such a darkdark blue linen gown. So I endeavored to lighten it. Should be easy peasy, or so I thought in my still-not-quite-educated mind.
I put the dress into the washer with a couple of boxes of color remover. I followed the directions to a T, and I waited. And waited. And, waited some more. Finally after a full day and night of nothing happening to the color, I rinsed it out. Bleach I thought, I bet bleach would do the trick. So, I carefully mixed the bleach into the washer water and added the still damp dress. And I waited and watched. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. So, I kept at this all day- a whole second day of futzing around with this dress- and the color didn't budge. By evening I was pretty much over this dress so I left it in the washer over night. In the words of the great Hagrid- I "Prolly shouldna done that". Next morning the dress was a gawdawful splotchy gray. It looked like it had been wadded up while wet and left to mildew. Gack! What to do? Two boxes of Rit dye, of course! Now my dress was a mauve-elous color, and not too splotchy looking either. Ta da! Or so I thought, in my still-not-very-smart-but-about-to-get-a-clue brain. I wore the dress to an event. It was hot, so I pulled at the front of the neckline to get a little air. RIIIIIIPP went the neckline. A few minutes later, RIIIIIP went the elbows! Crap! I'm disintegrating in front of the whole herd of people! Thank goodness I had an apron dress on, or else I'da been very nervous indeed. Now, because I hand sewed each and every stitch in that dress, and then went over every seam with a contrasting herringbone stitch, I was not about to give up so easily! I cut off the top and made a linen Viking apron dress out of it. It doesn't have any stress on it anywhere so it's held up pretty good, even 6+ years later. I do not at all recommend trying to remove darkdark blue dye from linen. YMMV, but don't count on it! ::Linda:: On Behalf Of Dawn Subject: [h-cost] questions about linen and dyes I've got a very dark blue linen that I'd like to make a 16th century dress out of. However, it's very very dark, nearly black, and I'd like to lighten it a bit. Fade it, even. I washed a test piece and some color came out in the water, but did not noticeably lighten the fabric. I think this was excess dye. I soaked a test piece in a very weak bleach solution and the fabric turned a chocolate brown color. Nice, but not what I wanted. And even then, it has dark blue dye spots all over it. I suspect that dye remover will get me the same result. Does anyone know of another method I could use for getting a more faded blue out of this? _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list h-costume@mail.indra.com http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
