50 shades of purple: a tutorial on how (not) to dye fabric

49 shades of purple

Hi everyone. It is cold outside but thanks to some projects it is pretty warm at my house.
Years ago when I started learning about making ballet costumes, I also began learning about dying fabric.  I blame my friend Scott for convincing me that it really was not that hard, he would say: "I can make spaghetti and dip dye fabric side by side", and of course, really, I should just own my own sins since I always think and say: "how hard can it be"?
If you read an earlier post you already know that this thinking has gotten me into trouble before. Still, I am clearly an optimist and having successfully dyed a lot of fabric, maybe I had just become complacent.
Well in the last few weeks I found out that dyeing fabric can be hard, very hard.
I had a project that required some custom dyed purple lycra, mesh, lace and silk. I knew that these fabrics can be dyed with acid dyes such as Jaquard, RIT, IDye natural and Procion dyes. I also knew that I needed to weigh the fabric (so as to use enough dye), wash it with a mild soap, heat the dye, add some soap to the dye bath and test samples of the fabric before dyeing the actual items. Simple right? Wrong

The first things I found out was: just because a supplier says that a particular fabric has a certain fabric content doesn't mean it does. "Everyone lies" to quote House! Check and double check fabric content. Lycra/Spandex, nylon, and silk will all dye with acid dyes such as Jaquard, RIT, IDye natural and a few others. Polyester will not dye; if a fabric has more than 50% polyester it will dramatically change how the fabric dyes. Although the mesh I used was supposed to be nylon/lycra it was not.
I ended up with a strange, grey plum color.

White "nylon" mesh dyed with Rit (bottom left) then overdyed with IDye polyester

You can now get IDye polyester, a special dye for home dying polyester, but it is a special dye, that can only be special ordered as most stores do not carry it.
The second thing I learned is that every batch of dye is unique; it always requires multiple tests and it is best to let the fabric dry completely to check the color.

Left to right (top): Nylon Spandex leotard with nylon lace, stretch satin,  polyester mesh

; bottom: nylon mesh

The third thing is that when you dye different fabrics in the same dye bath, they take the dye in their own unique way. The silk I used had a pattern in it, and it caused the lilac-purple dye to "split".

Example of a "split" dye

The background fabric took the blue tones and the stripe took the reds, so that I ended up with a strange blue and pink striped piece of fabric. Split dye can be very interesting and beautiful but for my purposes it was not what I wanted. I needed my leotard to be an even, ombre dye. Eventually I did manage to get this.

Nylon spandex and nylon mesh dyed with Lilac Jaquard dye

White satin spandex and white stretch lace (both nylon)

I am very fortunate to have a father who is a dye chemist and a mother-in-law who is an expert spinner, weaver and fabric dyer, so I called in their help. My mom and dad arrived just before Christmas to find my kitchen taped up with drop clothes, pots of smelly dye bubbeling on the stove and me in old clothes, face mask, rubber gloves and goggles.

Part of my kitchen counter + samples.

It is a very, very good idea to wear old clothing and to use multiple drop cloths because you can bet serious money that you will have drips, splashes and splotches, and that they will always find that little gap in your drop cloth!! The polyester dyes, dye everything: linoleum, melamie counters, they even seem to be able to penetrate varnished on wood. I still am trying to remove some little droplets in the kitchen but I think that sanding down the cupboards and revarnishing and repainting are my only option.
Another thing is to use glass if possible or stainless steel, not aluminium or plastic. The dye will react with all of the containers but especially aluminium and plastic. Also, never use bowls, measuring cups, spoons etc. that you use for dyeing for food. No matter how well you wash and scrub, trace amounts remain and the dyes are toxic and carcinogens.
Together with my dad I determined that it was best to use distilled water, measure the pH (I ended up adding a little white vinegar to get that around 6.5-5 so slightly acidic), get the temperature no higher than 80 C and carefully time the time in the dye bath. For polyester dyes, you need to actually boil up the dye, with the fabric and then simmer for 30 to 60 minutes. Not all fabrics can handle that, nylon for instance can melt!.
After testing the dye mixture, again, and again, and 25 more times,  I was finally satisfied and dyed my fabrics. Here is the end result:

end result of fabric dyeing

Yes, you are correct, I still ended up with a spectrum of shades of purple. At least when I was done I had the same "tone" of purple, if not the same shade, and it looked good for my application.
I think the "moral" of this tale is that you need to take the time to test, try not to mix too many fabrics with different fiber contents as they take the dye in different ways, resulting in dye splitting and to try to keep time, heat, water quality and pH stable.

Swans and flowers and tutus oh my

 I haven't posted for a while due to the large amount of work I have had on recently.
After finishing the Civil war ball gowns I had to hustle to full fill an order for Swan lake bodice overlays and plates for a customer, make a dress, veil and hats for my brother's wedding, sew 20+ costumes for a local dance recital, work on a gold metallic tutu for a customer and work on an enormous number of alterations.
First things first. A customer contacted me about Swan lake tutu decorations. I began by drawing a number of sketches for the customer so that she could choose what she liked and could afford.

Sketches of bodice overlays.

After that I ordered the rhinestones (Rhinestone guy's premium hot-fix crystals which are awesome), selected trims, cut the bodice overlay shapes, cut out 164 fabric "feathers" and the wing shapes.

fabric "feathers" for San lake plates

To make the bodice overlays, I pinned then sewed a false nude panel and silver rim onto netting, then glued hackle feathers and applied hot-fix rhinestones.

Swan lake bodice decoration overlays

To make the swan wing shaped decorations, I pinned and appliqued the feathers to heavy duty interfacing shapes, sewed this onto netting plates and applied the hot-fix crystals.

One swan lake tutu plate.

The basic technique and patterns for these tutu decorations are described in Claudia Folts book: "Finishing touches".
Next I worked on several items including a 1920's inspired wedding veil for my brother's wedding. I will write a separate post on that.
Next I worked on a large project of 20+ costumes for a dance recital. The theme of the performance was the parable of the sower and the seeds. The smallest children in the recital were to represent seeds being planted in the earth and then sprouting into beautiful flowers. My idea for the costumes were earth toned t-shirt, tights and tutus with petals that would drop down to "reveal" tulips, roses, sunflowers, daisies, clover and morning glories. The middle group of students were to be dancing princesses and the oldest dancers were to represent a gardener tending flowers (hyacinth and lavender).

fabric petals for 9 children's sprouting flower costumes

For the little children's costumes I ruffled large amounts of earth toned tulle, which I sewed to elastic waists, over which two rows of brown and colored petals were stitched. Ribbon loops were attached to the brown side of the petals, and when they were tied up with ribbon, the children looked like little brown seeds. Once the ribbons were untied, the petals dropped down to reveal their "true" colors.
For each of the dancing princesses I made flowered circlets with hand-made ribbon flowers on them, and tulle and ribbon streamers (the technique for this is also described in Claudia Folts' book, "Finishing touches").

Flowered "princess" headpiece with ribbon work flowers

For the dresses I drew out a new pattern combining elements from an old "Gunny Sachs" and "Daisy Kingdom" pattern. The dresses were made of pink, lavender and cornflower blue crepe with wide chiffon "princess" sleeves.

The beginnings of six "princess" dresses

Finished princess dress with headpiece

Lavender dress

Cornflower blue

For the oldest group of dancers, I made two Romantic length "petaled" tutus, with green tights, and top and for the gardener a yellow cotton and chiffon dress. The dancers representing the flowers had green velvet and ribbon work headbands, while the gardener wore a purchased straw hat. To reduce the fullness of the petaled tutus, I quilted the tulle along the hip line.

"Hyacinth" petaled tutu

"Lavender" petaled tutu

Green velvet and "lavender" ribbon work flowers

Finally I received an order for a custom made, gold metallic tutu. I loosely based the coloring and design on the Gold Fairy tutu I had made for a performance of Sleeping Beauty.  Key difference were that this tutu did not have as many layers of double hand pleating in it (three layers instead of 6), used some gold metallic mesh, a different type of enhanced sparkle net (purchased from Tutu.com) and a black basque instead of a gold basque. 

Gold mesh and gold enhanced sparkle nets

Original design + notes for the "Gold" fairy from Sleeping beauty

As for the original tutu, I did dye some of the tutu net and the pants a rich gold. I also, spray painted plastic tacks with gold metallic paint to hide them during tacking.

Bottom of tutu with hand-pleated god mesh and dyed to match panties.

The finished tutu looks very even and will be going out to the customer in the next day or two.

 

Completed gold tutu with black powernet basque

My plans for this summer are to work on custom leotards (I will post about this soon as I have started on the first 4 samples), go to Tutu.com's tutu school again (this time to learn men's costuming) and finally work on building some rental costumes for the fall.

Making hats for ballet

Just this week I made a hat for a dancer sight unseen.  When making a headpiece or any costume item choosing the right materials and colors is very important. The hat I was making was going to be brown with cranberry colored flowers. Sounds easy, no? but what is cranberry or even brown for that matter? Here is just a small example of shades of cranberry:

 If we are really honest though, color choices are much more like this; just look at the bottom row for "brown":

Since I did not have any fabric swatches I just guessed and made what I thought looked good; a bit risky but I figured if it looked pretty and had several shades, even if it wasn't a perfect match it would still look good. A good way to help with choosing colors and being on the same page when it comes to talking about colors  is to go to the paint store and select some of those chips.
Due to time constraints I had to go with what I had available so I dug into my stash and found some lovely velvets and some lilac and "cranberry" red silk. The dancer and I decided on the brown velvet for the hat base and then I came up with the idea to take silk organza and dye it several shades of "cranberry".

Fabrics from stash

 The next challenge for a ballet hat was its design.

Brown velvet, wired buckram shape and cranberry silk organza for the flowers.

No one wants a hat to fall off but on a dancer staying on your head is a minimal requirement not just "would be nice". A ballet hat has to be fairly strong too. A while back I purchased an e-book from Prudence millenry to help me learn how to make couture flowers and headbands. Using the methods describe there I made a frame of wire and buckram, covered it with some flannel and then applied the velvet. The book called for ice-wool, a short of wool knit batting but that is very hard to find and expensive so I substituted flannel as the flalene. I then dyed horsehair (a nylon, millenry mesh braid which is very strong but will blend into the dancers hair) and some mesh elastic and sewed that onto the bottom of the hat.
The flowers were made by hand, using bias cut tubing and hand cut petals. I also made some Yo-yo style daisies and sewed glass beads into the center to simulate stamens.
Although there are specialize sewing machines to sew hats, you can use a regular machine, I ended up sewing everything by hand to get the tight, clean finish I wanted. The book also shows that to get the best results, the hat shape should be hand sewn.

Hat after blocking

I then blocked and shaped the hat form. To do this I pinned the shape to a foam head and using steam, which softened the glue in the buckram, I reshaped it. Once the hat cools down, the buckram stiffens up again so that the hat keeps it shape. The horsehair on the bottom of the hat and the mesh elastic strap (which runs along the back of the head at the base of the skull) allows the hat to be pinned all around so it will not come off.

Close up of the flowers and hat.

I was happy with the completed hat and after testing it (sounds silly but I feel an once of prevention is worth it), it was packed up and sent off. Another busy week but certainly not dull!

Odette, Odile and Diana: more tiaras, crowns and headpieces

Gold lace and Swarovski hot fix crystal headpiece in Tanzanite and pinks.

The last few weeks have been so much fun for me with designing and making more ballet headpieces. I continued to work on the headpieces I had been making and finished both the gold and fuschia princess ones and the silver Diana one.

Silver Diana headpiece with large crystals AB and Swarovski ligh sapphire stones

Then I received an order for an Odette (white swan queen) headpiece from a dancer in California, so I finally had enough in the kitty to purchase supplies. When the packages arrived from the whole salers it was just like Christmas: all those gorgeous sparkly stones, real Swarovski teardrops, briolets and several gross vintage Precosia rosee montese and snowy white hackle pads. While waiting for my packages I had made the felt shapes for the feathers and my husband had made the wire frame.
The day the supplies arrived I set to work and by early evening I had a feather shape and the beginnings of the jewel:

Start of an Odette headpiece

Ideally, you need to try the feather shape on the dancer so that you can trim the feathers but since I could not do that I tried the headpiece on my daughter and then carefully trimmed, glued and sewed the feathers in place. The difference between this head pieces and the original one I made for Leila was remarkable. Real stones are just so much more sparkly and having the right shape to the feathers is more elegant.
Don't get me wrong. Leila looked stunning in her costume and the headpiece was beautiful but the new headpiece was just more so. Judge for your self:

original Odette headpiece

new Odette, sent to California

Now that I have so many beautiful supplies I am going to create another Odile (black swan) headpiece and I have been drawing designs for a slew of other ones. I am especially inspired to make some beautiful  fairy ones. I'll keep you posted on how that  goes.

More headpieces: Raymonda, Le Corsaire, La Esmeralda, Diana and Acteaon etc.

I confess I went a little crazy the other day and started making some headpieces...at present I am up to 12 and counting. What brought this on? Cabin fever? (it is currently snowing and cold) Just my average over-enthusiasm? Huge popular demand? Well a little bit of everything. I received several request over at my Etsy store for (unusual) headpieces but had nothing to offer. Since everyone wanted them yesterday, well I was unable to oblige. Also, I like making headpieces: all that glitter, all those jewels and laces it is just the most fun about costuming.
I also discovered that I had materials, lots and lots of materials and dh said that I could not bring another item into the house without getting rid of something. So.....
Many of the basic headpiece shapes were made according to Claudia Folts' instructions for tulle princess headpieces, as described in her book "Finishing touches",  some headpieces I saw online and the rest came from my very active imagination.
Here are some of the finished ones:
Several could be for Arabian or Oriental themed ballet roles and depending on the colors of the  costume (pinks, purple, blues etc.) would work.

La Bayadiere, Arabian style headpiece in pink, burgundy and purple modeled by Lydia

La Bayadiere, Arabian etc. in pink/burgundy and purple tulle

I made two green and gold headpieces  that would be great for La Esmeralda.One is a wire circlet with flat sequins while the other is built on a horsehair frame and has coin trim on it.

Swarovski hot fix stones along the front.

Most of the crystals I used were sewn or wired by hand and were Chinese crystals. They had been sold to me as Swarovski but when I received them it was clear to me that they were not (the facets on the crystals were not uniform or the coatings looked "oily). It would have cost too much to send them back and I figured that if I clearly label them as what they are (i.e. made in China imitations) and charged a much lower price for these headpieces than it would be okay to use them. The stones do still sparkle more than acrylic and they look good especially when inter-spaced with real Swarovski.  From now on I will only order from companies that can guarantee that the crystals are Swarovski or Precosia (i.e. they only come in factory sealed packs).
I made two headpiece with different shades of blue tulle and gold or silver trim, which would look lovely with a blue and gold or a blue and silver tutu. Possible ballet roles would be Raymonda, Le Corsaire or even La Bayadere: 

This headpiece could be for and Arabian themed role such as Solor (if it was turned the other way or had a feather added, or even something like the Pharoh's daughter:

I was very happy that I received a request for a custom made Raymonda headpiece for a lovely dancer in Florida. I shipped it out this morning and I am hoping that she will be very happy with it because it was so much more beautiful than the photo lets on. I also hope that I will get some great press from it because if she likes it and her friends like it etc. than I might get a few more customers.

A Raymonda headpiece made for a customer in royal blue, black velvet and dark purple

Having a custom order and another sale motivated me to finish more.
The headpiece that is my current favorite is the Diana and Actaeon headpiece. It is a wreath of gold plastic leaves dotted with hand-sewn red Chinese bicone crystals.

Diana headpiece

After a lot of fiddeling around I made a redish-gold center moon applique and added some large crystal AB rhinestones to it. All of these items are so hard to photograph but I think this gives a pretty good idea of what it looks like.

Completed Diana headpiece with center moon shaped jewel

I am also working on one in silver and pale blue, possibly with some silver stars and a Talisman or other oriental princess crown using a very pretty lace.

Finally I have been learning how to make flowers using flower petals and making real silk flowers. I found an online book/picture tutorial from Prudence millinery (she makes hats for Vivienne Westwood among others) which was very good. I started by dying some silk organza I had into lovely sorbet colors and once I get my sewing room in a bit more shape, I'll start making the flowers. I'll keep you posted!

Spanish skirts and practice tutus

Several weeks ago, I blogged about the Spanish skirts and the practice tutus I had been making. Thanks to Stephanie Harris of Harris photographyhttps://www.facebook.com/pages/Harris-Photgraphy/366353280120806?ref=ts&fref=ts and Annelise, Catherine, Bridget and Gabrielle, soloists and senior dancers at the Ithaca Ballet for participating in my first photo shoot.
The costumes highlighted each individual dancers unique beauty and style (and I ran out of adjectives to describe them; I mean how many ways can you state the obvious that these girls look magnificent?!)

Bridget and Catherine look gorgeous in these Spanish skirts

 Bridget looks regal and beautiful in this four tiered Spanish skirt in black and

Soloist Catherine embodies a Spanish princess in this Spanish skirt with matching mantilla and rose headpiece

Annelise personifies the icy beauty of the Snow Queen.
This costume includes a stunning Russian style headpiece

Practice tutus are available for sale at my Etsy site or via SharpSewingNY facebook page.

These tutus are perfect for class: 

Practice tutus in pink, white and black
Perfect for class 

 

Rehearsal: 

Catherine soars in her practice tutu, customized with a double hand-pleated top layer.

Or Performance:

Catherine, Bridget and Annelise take a bow

Catherine, Bridget and Annelise

Soloists Catherine (at left) and Annelise (at right) model their practice tutus
Catherine's tutu has a double hand-pleated top layer and Annelelise's tutu is custom sized.

The dancer's also modeled some of the custom made items that I offer:

Annelise models a custom made Sugar plum performance tutu