Project Reveal: Part II More dyeing

Yesterday, my husband took the kids for the day to his office.  I thought about cleaning the bathrooms, but of course what I did was work on my outfit for Project Reveal.  Originally, I had planned on a velvet skirt, the wool coat and some kind of green bodice.  But when I put all that green together I had visions of the Jolly Green Giant.  So.....with a friend, we walked around the fabric store looking at colors and fabrics and decided bright pink was the thing I needed for the bodice.  The pink silk they had was a dupioni and a bit bluer than I wanted, so I bought a beige silk broadcloth at a lower price and decided that once again dyeing was an option.

I found this wonderful tool that allows you to mix dyes on the computer before you try experimenting with them for real.  It is called Dye Mixer.  What an awesome tool!  I was able to hone in on the color that I wanted pretty quickly and play around with other colors for fun.  The color I ended up with was pretty darn close to what I developed on the computer.  For my wool coat I used 3 teaspoons of lemon yellow Procion Mx and 1/8 teaspoon of Turquoise.  You can see the resulting colors in my little scrap pile.  This scrap pile, by the way, is all that is left of the coat after I cut out the pattern pieces and cut out my other little pieces that I needed for my design.  Pretty small pile for a redesign....

For my bodice, I decided that fuchsia, lemon yellow and cobalt blue were the best combinations.  I ended up with a beautiful piece of cotton knit after I finished, but a washed out purplely silk.  So, I over dyed the silk again in just pure fuchsia, and you can see what I ended up with.   However, the cotton that I dyed to match it no longer matched, but luckily, I had a piece of cotton knit in my stash that just about matches.  The color of the silk is not as intense as the cotton, but that was how it worked out in the dye pot the first time.  You can see the silk broadcloth on top, the cotton knit, and then the green of the coat.  I think this color combination will work out much better than the green on green on green, which was getting a bit boring.

After I dyed these pieces, I had some leftover dye and went crazy dyeing fabric that I didn't like.  I ended up with a bunch of melon colored fabric for my daughter.  She loves orange right now, and the melon will look good with her fair complexion.  I also over dyed a shirt that had gotten bleach on it, and it came out pretty well, it is now wearable, and a jacket that I bought in a moment of weakness.  It is a cotton rayon knit that was beige.  I wanted the black one, but they were out of black so I bought beige in a tent under the sun.  It was a much different color on me in the house in front of my mirror.  A big yuk!  So into the dye pot it went to come out a nice kind of blue jean blue.  But now it needs some interest.  I am going to enlist  a friend, Nancy Bond, to help me get it looking a bit more interesting, more like some of her clothes with the stamped and painted designs.

Finally, for the rest of my day I cut out poplar leaves.

I have a nice pile now for making my collar.  I am not sure how I will get them onto the coat, but I will think on it.  

I don't have enough fabric left to face the jacket front at all, so I am not sure how I am going to close the jacket.  I have 2/3 yard of silk that I dyed in the same color as the coat.  It was originally going to be my corset, but now I have that fabric to use.  I am thinking of making it into bias and edging the coat with it.  Stay tuned.  I am going to finish cutting out all my pattern pieces today, and will get back with an update soon.  The finish date for Project Reveal is November 4, and the runway show is November 11.  Hopefully I can get it all done....