The sign outside Atex Fabrics
I was in Vancouver in late September, and one of the first places I visited was Dressew, a fabric store I’ve been to a number of times before, and blogged about a few times before as well. I noticed that a store I haven’t been to before opened up across the street – Atex fabric. I had to check it out!
new black and white pencil skirt
While I was cleaning up in my sewing space not long ago, I started two bags of fabrics for mundane, ordinary, everyday clothing (instead of costumes). One bag was labeled “pencil skirts” and the other “circle skirts”. My hope was to cut out a few skirts at one time, and then sew them up, assembly-line style.
My finished cotton hankie from the indigo dyeing class
You might recall that in a previous post I mentioned ‘tie dyeing’ with indigo natural dyes, and that at a class I had another chance to try this out. This class took place at Harvest Feast, an SCA event in September as part of the Shire of Bitter End.
This post will share photos and some information from that class… though some of the insights from our instructor I also shared in the previous indigo-related posts!
Silk dyed with madder and indigo
In my earlier post about Dyeing with Indigo, I showed off some of the photos and videos of the handspun wool yarn dyeing and the results. Now I’ll show off fabric instead!
Our hostess had some resist block-printed silk to test out (mostly testing out the historically-informed resist rather than the dye itself) while one guest brought a strip of cotton to dye for a trim, another brought some silk from a salvaged wedding dress, while I brought some linen, as did another guest.
As I mentioned in an earlier post about the madder pot, I started my linen in the madder vat, but didn’t like the pale coral colour, so I popped it into the indigo vat.
The completed lacing strip in my German renaissance bodice, sliding a piece of boning into the strip. This will support the lacing and keep the strip from buckling. It keeps tension more even.
There are a number of different corset boning options you will have, each with benefits and problems. I’ll try to go over some of them. Most of these options include both high and low qualities, which can add some problems to a good compare/contrast. Ultimately, you may wish to do additional research to decide what boning you think is best for your needs.
Dawn's Dress Diary 