Remember my Sew Bossy dress, below? It was very… sweet, wasn’t it? I mean, I wish I could wear really pretty things like that, but I think I cannot! But I thought it had promise, it just needed de-twee-ing.
before
I lopped off the sleeves, so now they are plain little cap sleeves; and then dyed the whole thing brown, using iDye, colour Brown. So, I didn’t do very much, but it’s definitely made a ginormous difference to my resolve to actually wear it! I kinda love its new look, still with an old-fashioned charm, but in a less cute and more prosaic way, reminiscent of peeling sepia-d wallpaper in a decaying old farmhouse, or something.
Since I had used ivory coloured polyester thread to sew the entire dress, after dyeing the hem stitching really stood out and looked awful. I unpicked all the visible ivory top-stitching and re-stitched using coffee coloured thread.
The little quirk of dyeing is that you cannot always predict exactly what your results are going to be. I found it interesting that the ivory based print has come out a slightly purple-y shade of brown, while the white cotton I used for the neckband and hemline piping has come out more of a yellow-y, coffee colour. Aaah, the lucky dip that is dyeing!
And while I had the dye pot and dye out I also re-ombred the top of my red velveteen skirt, which had lost a bit of its intensity since I first dyed it a year ago.
Details:
Dress; dress “T’ from the Stylish dress book by Yoshiko Tsukiori, original post here; with short sleeves, blue sprigged cotton dyed brown. My tutorial for basic one colour dyeing is here.
Tights; self-drafted, of denim look jersey knit, details and my tutorial for making your own custom fit tights here
Shoes; Francesco Morichetti, from Zomp shoes
Skirt; Vogue 1247, red cotton velveteen dip-dyed with iDye in Brown, details here. My tutorial for dip-dyeing is here.