ktlovely | Potential disaster averted! (Reply)

Today,

lachwen and I learned a valuable lesson: Let experts do their thing.

See, Gwendolyn wanted a light-ish, bright-ish blue Regency dress for an upcoming ball in Ann Arbor. She dyed the fabric last night, except due to circumstances beyond her control, it came out Superman Blue rather than "sky" blue as advertised. Also, it looked tie-dyed. It was very pretty, but not exactly period costume appropriate, you know?

So she came over to my house this afternoon, due to the presence of a good stove, lots of running water, and, above all, a washing machine. I saw the blue fabric--not good for a Regency dress. So our next brilliant idea was to use RIT color remover to whiten the silk taffeta before we re-dyed it blue.

Just for future reference, if I ever mention I'm going to use RIT color remover on silk again, stop me. It turned bright taxicab yellow. Canary yellow. Road-stripe yellow. That's the swatch on the bottom--the right end of it. Uh-HUH. I do not know any living human being that should ever wear that color, much less

lachwen or myself. Clearly, something had to be done.

I had two packets of RIT in various shades of blue and one in scarlet lying around. Actually, that's a lie--I had one blue and one scarlet and had to go digging in the trash for another, but we'll ignore that small detail. We tried overdyeing the taxicab yellow with just blue--that's the smallish black/green/puce swatch you see in the middle of the top. Meh. Too yellow to be charcoal, too light to be black...meh.

A mixture of scarlet overdyed with blue yielded the bronze color on the left. That one's pretty, but again, neither Gwendolyn nor I have the coloring to be able to wear it. At this point, I was hot and sweaty and she was very, very serious-looking. Things were headed down the drain--fast. In the end, I yielded to her artist's sensibilities. She threw in all the scarlet dye solution and about half the blue and we chunked the STILL-taxicab-yellow taffeta into it.

Personally? I love the color. That's the last swatch on the top, right side. It's kind of a gold undertoned rust/coral/rose, depending on the light. It's a very me color. It's like I keep telling people in the frame shop, though, when I try to sell them matboard in that color--it's just short of a neutral, but with more warmth so it's flattering to skin tones and black-and-white photos. I'd totally wear it. It is, however, Gwendolyn's dress, so we'll all hope she's happy with it. And doesn't feel too froufy.

(She's nodding at me as I type this, so I'm assuming what I'm saying is pretty accurate.) On the other hand, if anyone falls in love with that color and wants to buy it for the price of six yards of blue silk taffeta, we could negotiate.