Alas, the Screaming Neon Bliaut is no more. At least, it is no longer Screaming Neon.
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| Soaking in soapy water to open the fibers before it goes in the dye bath. Note the resemblance to the Home Depot bucket in the background. |
Nearly a year after making this garb, at last it was time to make it look a little more plant-dyed (and never mind that it's linen and linen wasn't typically dyed in medieval Europe.
shhhhhhhh. Plant dyes). First step: get the fabric soaked through and soapy, to help open the fibers and improve the dye's chances of penetrating even in folded and seamed areas. Incidentally, this is why it's better to dye yardage than finished garments, because folded and otherwise harder-to-swish-around bits increase the chances of a streaky or inconsistent dye job. More on that later.
The extremely dark-looking dye bath. Turns out you need a
lot of dye to make fabric go the color you want it, and since I was starting with fabrics nearly the same value, though different tones, I decided to aim for a darker maroon on the trim, and let the orange go to whatever it pleased. Purple as the goal was briefly considered, but overdyeing orange with blue is rarely a joyous experience.
Also, I spent half an hour stirring constantly to ensure no streakiness in the final dye job. Half an hour is a lot of stirring, and linen is
heavy when it's wet. If I do more dyeing, I will be strong like ox.
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| Sodden garb, plus some extra scraps in case of future repairs—there's a near-zero chance of achieving this exact color again. |
Next step was to rinse the excess dye out, which involved a great deal of splooshing fabric in a bucket until the bucket water was reddish, dumping and starting again. Dyeing is always a pretty water-demanding process, but the bucket method of rinsing is a little less profligate than running water constantly over the dyed fabric.
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| Red trim mostly ignoring instructions to chill a bit. |
After drying over a curtain rod, it's exceedingly wrinkled, but the colors are much improved. Intense reds are difficult to achieve with plant dyes, but not impossible—and the orange turned a perfect, beautiful pale cinnamon. Someday I still need to add embroidery or appliqué to the trim so it's as fancy as the cut deserves.
The extremely dark-looking dye bath. Turns out you need a lot of dye to make fabric go the color you want it, and since I was starting with fabrics nearly the same value, though different tones, I decided to aim for a darker maroon on the trim, and let the orange go to whatever it pleased. Purple as the goal was briefly considered, but overdyeing orange with blue is rarely a joyous experience.
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