Creating Lady Dimitrescu: Part 4

1–2 minutes

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The costume all made up, now its time to do the dipdye! I’m gonna try keep this short, mostly cause I’m really excited to show you the results!!!

This process I couldn’t photograph very easily, cause I kiiiiiinda need two hands for the process, but a quick description!
First of all, I boiled up a ton of water & vinegar – the vinegar is the setting agent for dyes that are on synthetic fabrics. I made up my dye ration in a seperate pot, and added one spoonful. THEN DUNK. To create a very smooth gradient, you have to keep it moving, if you sit still you end up with banding. I then added another spoonful of dye for each extra dunk, not going quite as high as the first time.

Althought that worked well, I did still have a couple of places that looked a little harsh – I took this spray bottle and sprayed it down – this helped budge the dye, and soften things up.

And here is the finished dress!! I am over joyed with how she turned out. I think the dyeing adds in that little extra detail that brings out all of the fabric folds. If I had more time, I would have liked to make this slightly more accurate to the game – The sleeves and the back are actually buttoned up, where as I just closed off the sleeves, and used an invisible zipper for the back. While it works, I think the zipper does make it look a little too modern, where as the buttons would have pulled it into a more 1930s/40s vibe, as the art director intended.

Over the summer break I would like to also have a try making her hat, to really fulfil in the New Look/Dior vibe to it all.

Now that Uni is done for this academic year, I’m going to go crawl into a recovery hole, and sort out moving house!

Stay crafty!

The costume all made up, now its time to do the dipdye! I’m gonna try keep this short, mostly cause I’m really excited to show you the results!!! This process I couldn’t photograph very easily, cause I kiiiiiinda need two hands for the process, but a quick description! First of all, I boiled up a…

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Quill Vulkin is a multidisplined artist & costume maker. They use a mix of methods and media to create thought-provoking pieces, as well as re-creations of work for clients.