"Resign yourself, Catherine! Shops must be visited! Money must be spent! Do you think you could bear it?" - Northanger Abbey

Sunday, April 7, 2013

Upcycling a regency open robe

My open robe started of as a front buttoning regency dress....but that went wrong so it got converted to an open robe. After wearing it for the Jane Austen Festival in Bath I realise a white open robe didn't look quite right plus it was looking more off white after its outing. So I decided to dye it. I think its what a thrifty regency lady would do.

First what colour? Well as no matter how much I try to go for a blue theme I end up going back to green...it was green I chose. They didn't have any 'olive green' left in the shop so I went for 'amazon gren instead'. I was a little worried it might be a bit too light and I'd need dye for a 2nd time.

But I was surprised and really pleased with how it looked in the bowl. I used a flash so its looking a little lighter in the pic than in reality.
I even rushed upstairs to grab some offcuts of the original fabric. They came out a little lighter than the main garment but close enough.
Looking rather regency in colour. The floral pattern on the white fabric has really come into its own against the green background.
You can see sneaky peek at spencer I'm working on

Still got a few last tweaks to do to the 'fit'. But overall I'm really impressed with the results. I might buy some more fabric and dye it. I like that that the colour is a lot less harsh than when you buy fabric already a certian colour. I may have to reserch some natural dyes.

2 comments:

  1. That dye looks lovely! I never think of dying fabric, but it certainly gives you some more options when you can't find the colour you want.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks. I've been putting it off for ages thinking it was going to be messy and time consuming. But it was actually quite easy. I might try the machine wash version next just to see how it comes out. I felt like I had more control hand dying as I could leave it for longer if needed.

      Delete