Sharpie marker vs. polyester

I found another shirt that I really like with my DragonCon steampunk owl catcher costume. The only problem is that it's black, gray, and white, and my costume is mostly brown. I needed some brown in the shirt.

It's 65% polyester, 35% rayon, so I tried RIT dark brown dye to see if it would take. I used the entire bottle of dye (with a cup of salt). I worried that simmering the pot of dye would mess up my shirt, so instead I used almost boiling water but turned off the heat so it wouldn't simmer. I kept the shirt in the dyebath for about half an hour, stirring it frequently to make sure it would dye evenly.

When I took it out of the dyebath, I put the dyed-gray jacket from last week in. I thought a bit of brown might make the gray a warmer shade that would go better with my outfit. That was before I rinsed out the shirt and realized the dye had turned it purple.

A light purple, barely a tint of pink, but definitely not brown. Not brown at all. And most of the dye rinsed out anyway. I thought maybe the stock pot I've been using for dying (it was a crappy stock pot but makes a good dye pot) was aluminum instead of steel as I'd thought, and it had reacted with the dye. I took the jacket out of the dye bath after barely ten minutes and rinsed it thoroughly in hopes that it wouldn't turn purple.

Instead, it had dyed to a marvelous deep brown. And when I ran it and the shirt through a delicate cycle of the washing machine, it stayed deep brown while the shirt lost almost all the purple tint--fortunately, but I was then back to where I'd started.

I'd gotten the shirt on clearance, probably because it had a small tear in the back bottom hem. Since it wasn't one I could wear to work because of the tear, I decided to try something else. I got out my brown Sharpie pen and got to work.

I shaded brown above several of the black stripe patterns to see how it looked. I really liked the effect, so I kept going. I'd finished the front and one of the sleeves when I realized the Sharpie marker, permanent though it's supposed to be, might not work on polyester any better than the dye had. But when I rinsed a section of the Sharpied shirt in water, the marker remained even when I scrubbed.

So hurrah! Sharpie wins! I haven't finished the back--I got too tired to continue, and it's bedtime anyway--but I tried it on with my corset and it looks good (if still a tiny bit purplish, although maybe that's just the light in the bathroom). The real test will be after I run it through the washing machine, but I think it'll be okay. It looks like the pattern of a barred owl's breast to me, which is why I like it so much.

Tomorrow I hope to have the skirt finished, and if it looks good I'll put a full tutorial up on how I made it. So far it's just what I had in mind.

Dying, sewing, and sticking feathers on things with glue

Today's post was going to be all about the transformation of a bright coral cotton blouse into an elegant black top that I may wear as part of my DragonCon costume. But I couldn't find the right size buttons and had to order some online today, so until I get them and sew them on I can't claim I'm done with the top. I also can't make the decision as to whether I'll wear it or not. I like it, but I'm not sure I like it enough.

I didn't just dye that shirt, though, I also dyed a light jacket thingie that I stopped wearing because the khaki-green color just doesn't look good on me, and a pair of long white socks that I got on sale but never wear.

The coral shirt is 100% cotton, the jacket is 60% cotton and 40% modal, and I don't know what the socks are made of. Cotton dyes beautifully, so I got a bottle of black RIT dye and used the stovetop method to dye the clothes.

I'd used RIT dye before, but only for undyed wool (one of my hobbies is handspinning). I didn't think about bleaching the clothes first, just dumped them in the dyebath. I also probably didn't keep the water hot enough. When I took the clothes out of the dyebath they looked fine, but after drying overnight they were really uneven. The decorative stitching around the blouse's neckline didn't dye at all, but I like the effect.

I redyed the blouse by itself the next night, with much better results. After I took it out of the dyebath I added the jacket; it didn't dye as evenly but I like the shade of gray a lot better than the green it was before. (The socks hardly dyed at all, so I guess they aren't made of natural fibers.) I washed the clothes in the washer, delicate setting, and they look quite nice.

Anyway, so that was one thing I did this week. On Friday morning, I woke up with a bad crick in my neck, so after work I spent the rest of the day lying on the bed with a heating pad on my neck, movies on the TV, and bleak misery in my heart. To occupy myself I picked up the sleeve pieces of the nightgown I'd started sewing way back in April, and finally did the embroidery I'd planned to do but never quite found time for.

Saturday my neck felt a bit better and I finished the embroidery. Today I intended to finish the nightgown, but, well, see this picture? If you can tear your attention away from my adorable cat, you can see what I accidentally did when I sewed on one of the sleeves. Yeah. I need to rip that seam out and fix that. Maybe next April.

Finally, I ordered a very nice fan for DragonCon--it's hot, I'll be wearing several layers of clothes including feathers, and I'll be doing a lot of walking. I need a fan. I like this one, but it was a bit drab. To dress it up a bit, I decorated the tassel on its end. Ordinarily I'm not a fan of gears stuck randomly to things (hey, gears! that makes it steampunk, right?), but I think this one looks kind of neat. I also added some turkey feathers and I like them well enough that I plan to glue them in place as soon as I can find where I put the glue.