When I got a commission for Delf Zuzu to make some fancy Princess dresses via DoA, she said she really wanted something nice for them, like silk. I had never worked with silk before, and while I knew it was expensive ($30 a yard) I didn't realize that you could only order it by the yard from online stores. I guess for some reason I assumed I could get 1/4 yard pieces, even though I knew full well you usually cannot purchase under a 1/2 yard at a time. So, I realized the only thing left to do for these dresses was to dye them. Which led to hours of research - the best dye, the setting process, tips on working with silk, the do's, the don't's. I discovered dyeing fabric to be nothing short of chemistry. You use specific dyes for specific fabrics, and set the dye with something of the same make up as the dye itself, i.e. acid dyes must be set with an acid, etc.
I ended up buying 3 yards of plain white silk, which should surely provide ample fabric for the 7 dresses. On top of that I bought 1/2 yd. of cream silk, and a 1/4 yd. of a blue green, which I am in the process if embroidering. (I am making a total of 9 dresses - 1 is made out of chiffon, and the other the cream silk mixed with a brown linen.) Then I ordered several acid dyes from Dharma Trading Company. (Great place to order from.) And since I didn't want to stand over a hot stove smelling vinegar, I got some citric acid to add to the dye bath instead. (I am working with 3 color palettes for my buyer - 1 doll wears pinks, one pale mints and blue, the other in creams and browns. For some dumb reason I only bought 2 shades of pink.)
Dyeing silk is actually really simple. I of course did the recommended test on some tiny pieces to get the shades I wanted for the dress I started with. When I worked up the courage, I pre-washed the whole big yardage, and let me tell you, silk dupioni wrinkles. Badly. It takes a lot of effort to iron out the majority of the wrinkles (I do wonder how some people have achieved this by merely hanging it up to dry. I did as well, and that was my result.) I found that Dupioni will never look like it did on the bolt once its been washed, but I really love the effect!
Once I did that, it was time to section off the amount of silk needed in each color for this dress, and then it was time to dye! To me, the most annoying part of dyeing is waiting for the water to come up to temperature. Not sure why this is so annoying to me, but it really is. For the palest pink, I put the fabric into the dye bath earlier than I should have, which was before I added the citric acid (following the instructions on the dye.) It only takes a few seconds to get the color I wanted, so I took it out of the bath, waited till the water reached 185 degrees, added the citric acid, and then the fabric for maybe 30 seconds. A perfect pale pink. For the second color, and much smaller piece, I needed a darker deeper pink. So I added a teensy bit of the darker pink dye (Flamingo) to the bath of Ballerina Pink. (I used very, very small amounts of dye, and no, I did not weigh my fabric.)
After they were done, it didn't take much time to get the loose dye washed out of the fabrics, and they were ready to dry. The next step of the process is what I was really dreading. Steam setting it for 3 hours. I got the news print (which I had to hunt down - apparently it isn't as plentiful here as in KY where lived?) and the supplies for the homemade silk steamer. (Big deep pot, washed out can, pie pan and towel.) According to instructions, you need to lay your silk flat on the paper, carefully roll it up, seal the ends and then coil it. It sounds really good on paper, but coiling it? How do you do that without crunching the fabric? I must be missing something here, so I abandoned that, and just cut out my pieces before I steam set the dye. Risky, as I could mess up and need to re-cut out a piece and re-steam set it, but that's what I decided to do.
I ended up cutting squares of the newsprint that would fit into my pan (after cutting out the 3 sheets that go in the bottom of the pan) and carefully laying out my pieces. Once I got them all laid out, not touching each other (there is a lot of pieces to this gown) I wrapped the entire stack in more newsprint, present style, and tied it shut with yarn.
The steam setting process itself isn't all that bad. Not at all what I expected. I kept a close eye on it to make sure the water didn't boil out. All in all, pretty simple!
I did find that my pieces came out of the paper super stiff. To help that, I just got them wet and re-ironed them. (Dupioni is a tougher fabric than some people make you think. It can handle water and heat, and comes out looking beautiful.)
All in all, its a fun process. I'm glad I am enjoying it, as I have quite a few more colors to dye and steam set. I'll post the finished dresses later on.
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