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Hello everyone!

I am back with a quick post sharing my misadventures in dyeing fabric and the making of McCalls 5431. This flared skirt has a yoke and back zipper closure; HUGE pockets! That illustration had me at hello. HUGE pockets! Purchased last year but only made about 3 months ago.

McCalls M5431

I made it in….linen! Lilac linen. This skirt consumes a lot of fabric. I made View D which is the longest skirt. The construction is very straight forward, similar to Hollyburn skirt for those who are familiar. For me the sizing was a bit on the larger side. Even though I went with the waist size nearest to my waist measurement I still had to take out 1.5″ in the center back seam to get the fit that looks like the pictures. Otherwise it was hanging off my hip (belly dancer style).

I decided to line it and that was not fun working with slippery lining fabric with seams falling mostly on the bias grain! Still it was worth it though as the skirt has a lovely feel to it when I am wearing it. I hung it for about a week to let the hem drop. The linen was quite stable and hardly dropped but the lining dropped by about an inch. Circle type skirts are lovely but dang! there is so much hemming to be done.

Once made up I decided I didn’t like the lilac so much but I wanted it to be navy blue instead. Bought my Dylon hand dye and voila!

I did not mean for it to have batik tie and dye effect – this was a botch dye job because my bucket was too small to let the fabric dye evenly. But worst of all – I was not agitating the water regularly. I forgot about it for about hour….In 2 minds about whether I should overdye it again but I feel like I spent enough time on this skirt. Plus I wore it to an open evening and a woman asked me where I had bought the skirt because she thought it was gorgeous. I told her I made it and she literally looked stunned. Love that 🙂 https://instagram.com/p/43qXqDNXHm/?taken-by=saturdaynightstitch

Further dyeing ventures…..

I bought some Powder Pink Dylon  to use on cotton poplin. I have this idea to make a colour blocked V1440 top in a chartreuse green and fresh pink. Since I had no luck finding the exact shades I like I thought I would dye the perfect shades. I used the stove top method and everything was going well until I decided that I wanted the pink to be less pastel so I added a smidge of some crimson I-Dye (a different brand to Dylon) and everything went downhill.

This is what came out of it: patchy with spots of blue and brown colour. The entire 1 meter of fabric was like this. Couldn’t be used so I decided to dye it crimson. Its ended up costing me quite a lot. £5 for the 1 meter + £3 for the Dylon pink dye + £3 for the Crimson I-Dye plus all the time spent in the washing machine! I could have just bought more expensive fabric! The crimson turned out quite nice though.

My mistake was to add the crimson as a powder. I think I should have dissolved it first. Or I just shouldn’t mix brands -_-. I also used Tropical green Dylon (hand dye) and the results were equally terrible….instead of  fresh charteuse green I got security guard 2 tone green….<sigh> this will be used for a muslin.
The other colour I wanted was a mustard. I-Dye do several mustard – y colours. I chose the Aztec Gold dye. At £6 a pop they are quite expensive. But they are relatively easy to use. You just throw the sachet in the washing machine add the damp fabric then 1 cup of salt and get the cycle going. The linen was a coral colour to start with (same linen that made my Japanese Boat neck dress here). The end result is very pleasing. You can see the before and after pictures below. It really is a lovely colour that I have not seen during any of my fabric jaunts so I am ahaapy about that. In conclusion I much prefer to machine dye. Its a lot easier!So instead of a pink and green colour blocked V1440 top it will be mustard and crimson…wont that be a sight?? Have you ever tried dyeing fabric?  I can see myself doing a bit more dyeing in future along with block printing which I have been reading loads about 🙂

Thanks for stopping by and Happy weekend sewing everyone!

Hila

XoX