Thursday, July 2, 2015

dyeing for a change...

I mentioned earlier that I intended to dye my beige girlfriend hoodie, so here's the story. Finally located some fabric dyes at the local Fabricland - it was much easier when my  neighbourhood Safeways used to have a whole section - seemed much cheaper then too! I had a couple of projects in mind - first, taking a white, silver teeth zipper and dyeing it for the watermelon girl hoodie - they had a small, powder packet of 'cerise', on sale for $3, what a deal! and it worked perfect, added just enough pink to the tape so when the garment is open, it will go well enough. With this pattern, when the zipper is closed, you really only see the teeth and of course, the pull tab.

I had a lace standard gauge remake of a KnitStyle design (Lace Waves, January 2014 & April 2014)that I had used Yeoman Yarns Cannele in glycine, an odd lilac/light blue-ish shade that I didn't really feel was my colour. I decided to transform it because I have never really worn it - put it on several times and took it off and tried it with something else and took it off again, you know how it is when you just don't feel right and I always blamed it on the colour.
I chose a bottle of pearl grey and one of royal blue. I tested a small amount of each dye (a couple of drops diluted in a tablespoon of water) on the corners of swatches of the same garment colours to see which would work better (both garments are 100% mercerised cotton). I thought the pearl grey would work nicely with the glycine lace (I'm looking for a blue-grey tone) and the royal blue should alter the beige to an MAO-friendly shade of denimy blue. The grey on the beige looked rather dull and dirty...
rats, I forgot to buy salt!
Tell you more later!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Dyeing is really a good way to express your creativity. What I love about this craft is that it allows us to restore the color our old clothes. If you're the frugal type, redyeing is definitely one of the best options to cut down on clothes shopping.