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!
Quillightful 