For a brief moment I thought I looked good in golden yellow and mustard.Wrong. I think the ancient Chinese were on to something when the Imperial Court Mandate stated that only the Emperor was allowed to wear yellow. It was a symbol of his status and affirmation of his power.
Well, since I clearly lack the power to pull off this colour (with a few rare exceptions), I gladly went and bought some blue dye and went to work.
Here you see a small selection of the things I dyed. I love all the different shades of blue, and now I actually can wear these clothes again.
The top picture is showing a close up of the softest cotton top. The flowers on it hardly showed before, now they really stand out.
Here are a few things to keep in mind before dying:
1. Always wash the clothes you are planning to dye. Stains take colour differently, so the colour ends up looking blotchy and uneven.
2. Not all dyes work on all fabrics. Cotton and linen soaks up the most colour, dying artificial fabrics is always a bit of a gamble.
3. The thread and other parts of your clothes might not take to the dye. That was the case in the dress in the bottom picture. I think the yellow stitches compliments the colour, but that might not always be the case.
Even if everything goes wrong, whatever you were dying was probably something you never wore in the first place, so you really don't have anything to loose . I've mis-dyed a number of things, but I always managed to use the fabric somehow. Nothing is ever a waste.
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