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labricoleuseOne of the projects that our Costume Production and Technology MFA students must complete in their third year of study is a historical reproduction. They choose a garment from our extensive vintage and antique clothing archive (perhaps 10% of which is searchable online at the CoStar site[1]), study it at length, reproduce it exactly with new materials and trims which must be as close as possible in fiber content and quality to the original piece, and finally write up a research paper on the garment itself with initial construction analysis and any information (if known) about the designer, owner/donor, etc.
One of our students this year has chosen to reproduce this beautifully-embellished but visibly damaged 1900 wool jacket:
It is comprised largely of a heavy, dense melton wool, in a shade a bit darker than the flash reveals it in this photo. The wool she purchased for the project was the correct weight and hand, but a tad too bright and "carnivally" a hue of royal, so i spent my afternoon dyeing it for her.
Wool is easiest to dye with a fiber-reactive dye that can be processed at room temperature. Unfortunately, i didn't have any dyestuff of that type in stock that would work to achieve the color needed, and there's not enough time to order any.
What we have plenty of--what most every theatre has plenty of in their dyeshop stock--is industrial size canisters of union dyes; we stock Rit brand. The reason most theatre shops use union dyes (aka household dyes) is because of their versatility; they are combinations of dyestuffs designed to dye a wide range of fibers--cotton, linen, wool, silk, nylon, rayon, all can be dyed with varying degrees of success with union dyestuffs. Professional dyers--those whose area of specialty and focus is dyeing--often dislike union dyes, but it's still what many shops use and keep around for day-to-day dye projects. Often it's not budgetarily practical to stock more specific kinds of dyes, unless your shop's focus itself is more specific (for example, a ballet company costume shop might instead stock disperse dyes for nylon and fiber-reactive cold-process dyes for cotton tights, since they know most of what they are building will be dancewear).
So, union dyes, can we use them to dye wool? Of course we can!
When using a union dye such as Rit to dye wool, there are three things to keep in mind.
1.) Fixing the dye. You MUST add white vinegar to the dyebath in order to fix the dye to the fiber. Wool and silk--protein-based fibers--require vinegar, whereas cellulose-based fibers like cotton and linen require salt. I dyed two yards of 60" wide melton wool and put in two cups of vinegar per yard. Experiment, you'll get a feel for how much to add for the best results. Some folks say equal weight to the fabric.
2.) Felting. The wool i dyed was melton, which is itself already of a felted texture so it didn't change its hand at all to speak of. You pretty much cannot avoid a certain amount of fuzzing and felting because water is the vehicle for the felting process--if your designer wants to guaranteed undoubtedly retain the manufacturer's finish and weave, s/he needs to buy wool the right dang color in the first place. But, the less you agitate the wool in the dyebath and in the rinse, the less felting and fuzzing will occur, so often there's not too much difference in the dyed texture and the pre-dyed texture, provided you are careful in your process. And, sometimes the felting is a desired effect.
3.) Shrinkage. What shrinks wool? Not water alone (water promotes felting, you recall). Not even heat or cold. Temperature shock shrinks wool. So, if your wool fabric is room temperature and you hit it with a blast from a steam iron, of course it will shrink! By the same token, if you chuck it in a bath of cold water, it will also shrink. (You get the densest felt by applying both water and temperature shock, because the water makes the fibers float around and want to felt up, and the temperature shock makes them seize.) So, if you want to minimize shrinkage, you keep a weather eye on your temperature. Soak your fabric in room temperature water before dyeing it. Put it into a room-temperature dyebath and then slowly raise the temperature to whatever degree needed to affect the dye process. (Don't boil wool, unless you want, well, boiled wool--thick, shrunk-up, chunky wool.)
So, in dyeing my student's wool yardage, first i washed the fabric in room temperature water, on the gentlest cycle with least agitation, and let it soak while i conducted some tests.
The first test was for shrinkage--i cut a sample piece and traced around it, then conducted a mini-dye-process on the swatch, noting my temperature and process and such. I lay the piece back into the tracing and measured how much width and length i lost. Overall i determined that i had 11.5% shrinkage with my process. We looked at her pattern layout to make sure that, if the entire yardage shrunk 11.5%, she'd still have enough to make the jacket. It fit, so onward ho!
The second test was for color--i hoped that one of Rit's stock colors would work to achieve the desired shade, so i did small swatches of a couple colors. Sure enough, Rit's Navy Blue turned her cartoony-royal wool into a nice more-sober hue of deep royal. It was a match with the original garment!
I did my dye process in our 60-gallon industrial dye vat, watching my temperature using a lab thermometer. I didn't want it to get up over 160 degrees, but i knew that heat would help speed the reaction so i put the wool in at around 80 degrees and slowly let the bath heat up, then cool back down. I rinsed the wool with Synthrapol in a warm gentle cycle to remove excess dye and hung it to air-dry.
The most important document in this or any dye process is your mixing ticket.
Here's mine for this project:
You can see my shrinkage test sample at the bottom right corner (along with my algebraic figuring of yardage percentages). Under "Match Color," this sheet has a Pantone number (those books of colors they have at Home Depot and such in the custom paint mixing section), but if i'm trying to match a swatch or paint chip or whatever, i just staple that right onto the sheet. In this case, since i'm matching an antique garment i can't take a swatch from, i used a Pantone number for reference; i have a Pantone book in my dyeshop for this reason.
I fill one of these mixing tickets out for every project i do in our dyeshop, for mainstage costumes, student work, supported research and outside contracts, everything. It's a good idea to keep these sorts of extensive records in case you need to know exactly what you did in order to (god forbid) repeat the process. Suppose my student made her reproduction and someone stole it before she turned it in; suppose she had to reorder more wool and needed it dyed all over again to rebuild the garment. With my mixing ticket, i could do exactly that...well, or once i scribble my formula on it & note that it was Rit Navy that achieved the final approved color.
There you go, an inside look at my method for seat-of-the-pants wool yardage dyeing! Once the student has finished her reproduction, it will be photographed and the pictures (as well as her research paper on the piece) will go up on the CoStar site page for the original, here:
http://drama.unc.edu/costar/Garment?garmentId=1601
[1] We have folks working to archive our collection and we have only just begun to do so; this percentage will grow over the next few years until, ideally, at some point everything we have will be documented on the online archive.
One of our students this year has chosen to reproduce this beautifully-embellished but visibly damaged 1900 wool jacket:
It is comprised largely of a heavy, dense melton wool, in a shade a bit darker than the flash reveals it in this photo. The wool she purchased for the project was the correct weight and hand, but a tad too bright and "carnivally" a hue of royal, so i spent my afternoon dyeing it for her.
Wool is easiest to dye with a fiber-reactive dye that can be processed at room temperature. Unfortunately, i didn't have any dyestuff of that type in stock that would work to achieve the color needed, and there's not enough time to order any.
What we have plenty of--what most every theatre has plenty of in their dyeshop stock--is industrial size canisters of union dyes; we stock Rit brand. The reason most theatre shops use union dyes (aka household dyes) is because of their versatility; they are combinations of dyestuffs designed to dye a wide range of fibers--cotton, linen, wool, silk, nylon, rayon, all can be dyed with varying degrees of success with union dyestuffs. Professional dyers--those whose area of specialty and focus is dyeing--often dislike union dyes, but it's still what many shops use and keep around for day-to-day dye projects. Often it's not budgetarily practical to stock more specific kinds of dyes, unless your shop's focus itself is more specific (for example, a ballet company costume shop might instead stock disperse dyes for nylon and fiber-reactive cold-process dyes for cotton tights, since they know most of what they are building will be dancewear).
So, union dyes, can we use them to dye wool? Of course we can!
When using a union dye such as Rit to dye wool, there are three things to keep in mind.
1.) Fixing the dye. You MUST add white vinegar to the dyebath in order to fix the dye to the fiber. Wool and silk--protein-based fibers--require vinegar, whereas cellulose-based fibers like cotton and linen require salt. I dyed two yards of 60" wide melton wool and put in two cups of vinegar per yard. Experiment, you'll get a feel for how much to add for the best results. Some folks say equal weight to the fabric.
2.) Felting. The wool i dyed was melton, which is itself already of a felted texture so it didn't change its hand at all to speak of. You pretty much cannot avoid a certain amount of fuzzing and felting because water is the vehicle for the felting process--if your designer wants to guaranteed undoubtedly retain the manufacturer's finish and weave, s/he needs to buy wool the right dang color in the first place. But, the less you agitate the wool in the dyebath and in the rinse, the less felting and fuzzing will occur, so often there's not too much difference in the dyed texture and the pre-dyed texture, provided you are careful in your process. And, sometimes the felting is a desired effect.
3.) Shrinkage. What shrinks wool? Not water alone (water promotes felting, you recall). Not even heat or cold. Temperature shock shrinks wool. So, if your wool fabric is room temperature and you hit it with a blast from a steam iron, of course it will shrink! By the same token, if you chuck it in a bath of cold water, it will also shrink. (You get the densest felt by applying both water and temperature shock, because the water makes the fibers float around and want to felt up, and the temperature shock makes them seize.) So, if you want to minimize shrinkage, you keep a weather eye on your temperature. Soak your fabric in room temperature water before dyeing it. Put it into a room-temperature dyebath and then slowly raise the temperature to whatever degree needed to affect the dye process. (Don't boil wool, unless you want, well, boiled wool--thick, shrunk-up, chunky wool.)
So, in dyeing my student's wool yardage, first i washed the fabric in room temperature water, on the gentlest cycle with least agitation, and let it soak while i conducted some tests.
The first test was for shrinkage--i cut a sample piece and traced around it, then conducted a mini-dye-process on the swatch, noting my temperature and process and such. I lay the piece back into the tracing and measured how much width and length i lost. Overall i determined that i had 11.5% shrinkage with my process. We looked at her pattern layout to make sure that, if the entire yardage shrunk 11.5%, she'd still have enough to make the jacket. It fit, so onward ho!
The second test was for color--i hoped that one of Rit's stock colors would work to achieve the desired shade, so i did small swatches of a couple colors. Sure enough, Rit's Navy Blue turned her cartoony-royal wool into a nice more-sober hue of deep royal. It was a match with the original garment!
I did my dye process in our 60-gallon industrial dye vat, watching my temperature using a lab thermometer. I didn't want it to get up over 160 degrees, but i knew that heat would help speed the reaction so i put the wool in at around 80 degrees and slowly let the bath heat up, then cool back down. I rinsed the wool with Synthrapol in a warm gentle cycle to remove excess dye and hung it to air-dry.
The most important document in this or any dye process is your mixing ticket.
Here's mine for this project:
You can see my shrinkage test sample at the bottom right corner (along with my algebraic figuring of yardage percentages). Under "Match Color," this sheet has a Pantone number (those books of colors they have at Home Depot and such in the custom paint mixing section), but if i'm trying to match a swatch or paint chip or whatever, i just staple that right onto the sheet. In this case, since i'm matching an antique garment i can't take a swatch from, i used a Pantone number for reference; i have a Pantone book in my dyeshop for this reason.
I fill one of these mixing tickets out for every project i do in our dyeshop, for mainstage costumes, student work, supported research and outside contracts, everything. It's a good idea to keep these sorts of extensive records in case you need to know exactly what you did in order to (god forbid) repeat the process. Suppose my student made her reproduction and someone stole it before she turned it in; suppose she had to reorder more wool and needed it dyed all over again to rebuild the garment. With my mixing ticket, i could do exactly that...well, or once i scribble my formula on it & note that it was Rit Navy that achieved the final approved color.
There you go, an inside look at my method for seat-of-the-pants wool yardage dyeing! Once the student has finished her reproduction, it will be photographed and the pictures (as well as her research paper on the piece) will go up on the CoStar site page for the original, here:
http://drama.unc.edu/costar/Garment?garmentId=1601
[1] We have folks working to archive our collection and we have only just begun to do so; this percentage will grow over the next few years until, ideally, at some point everything we have will be documented on the online archive.
