Innocent Fabric and Some Very Evil Dye

My SWATH (Snow White and the Huntsman) costume is not going well. I haven't even started sewing it yet, and already trouble is brewing. Over the weekend I went shopping for the material. Green suede with some brown dye to render it more earthy, cream cotton for the underskirt and white cotton which I planned to dye with a mixture of grey and blue. Or so I thought.

Goodies!

Deciding that I would only need the grey colour, I put the grey dye in a giant bucket and stirred it up with boiling water and salt, following the instructions. Trustingly, I asked my Dear Mother's opinion of the colour, which I thought looked too purple. She said to drop it in and get it out straight away and we should be right. This is what came out. -Sniff-. Not the silvery-pale blue on the left, the navy blue on the right. I nearly cried. My only consolation is that it is actually a very nice colour, so I can eventually make something else out of it, but not my underdress.

Good & ...

...Evil!

It was put through the washing machine immediately, but didn't lose any of the colour. So I guess its back to the shops for some pale blue cotton, in a shade near enough to what I want, since I am too scared to make another attempt at dying more. Needless to say, I will be VERY careful and only put the tiniest pinch of brown dye with my green suede, since it is almost the right colour now. It only needs a light wash of brown.

And this time I will test a scrap, instead of being lazy. I have learnt from my mistake already. =) 

Snow White and the Evil NonStep-Sister

  My last post was all future Regency clothing joy, ahh, glee. Visions of skipping through flower filled meadows in the spring and all that. That was until The Event happened. Yes, my sister has been the cause of this evil. She was supposed to be planning and sewing, to my joy, the costumes that she, my brother and I would be wearing to the Abbey Medieval Fair this year. Her costume ideas are amazing, I constantly find myself jealous of them. In a good way! She is good at creating, I work well from someone else's idea. Hence my love of re-creating movie costumes.

  Anyway, yesterday she announced out of the blue that she had come to the conclusion that she will not get the costumes finished for this year's fair, in two months, and will save them for next year. Eeeek! Luckily I have an outfit I've been dying to sew, and this gives me an excuse to go and Shop For New Fabric. Haha!

  Snow White's dress from Snow White and The Huntsman. I will be making the full length version she only wears for the first part of the movie, but there are no costume shots of that. I know that the overdress is made of green suede, but I can't find any reference for the underdress. I'm thinking perhaps some kind of pale blue cotton. Hmm.

  I am armed with Simplicity pattern #1773, which I will modify to look more like the movie costume. Maybe just using less ghastly fabric will help ... =)

  I only hope I will finish it in time, but I will post pics along the way. If I remember to document my sewing exploits, which I am notoriously bad at.