The 5:2 Diet – Initial Observations

When I turned 60 I decided that I no longer wanted to diet. My weight, that had been pretty stable in the middle of the normal range for most of my life, started to fluctuate in my late forties and fifties. I dieted quite successfully, kept the weight off for a couple of years and then it crept back up again. Repeat, repeat ad nauseam.

So when I passed the big milestone, I thought that my nearest and dearest didnt care if I was a bit overweight, and certainly no one else did either. So why should I?  I still feel ok and I am healthy, my blood pressure is fine, no sign of diabetes. My cholesterol is a bit high, but these days research has cast significant doubt on whether high cholesterol really is the problem it was always supposed to be. Some overweight is even recommended for seniors, as an insurance during a possible health crisis. My BMI is 28, which does not please me particularly, but neither is it cause for alarm.

Then I saw Michael Mosely’s documentary on fasting and was quite fascinated. Fasting as a rejuvenation for the body seemed really attractive. But I wasn’t sure if I could do it, so I prevaricated for a couple of month while trying to make friends with the idea. Christmas may have had something to do with the delay as well.

I finally started this week, and fasted for two separate days. It was surprisingly easy, much easier than I anticipated. I wasn’t hungry at all. A little bit of a furry feeling in the mouth, a few passing thoughts about food I couldn’t have, but nothing more challenging. I ate my 500 cals over three meals and one snack, drank lots of herb tea and felt absolutely fine. No lack of energy and a weird feeling of virtue. Where was my halo?

The next morning after a fast day I wasn’t any hungrier than usual, and throughout the day I found myself pegging back on food. My stomach had shrunk.

This is really surprising. I find sticking to a low calorie diet over extended periods very difficult. 1400 cals for months on end is the pits, and I might only lose 1kg a month if I’m lucky. But with the 5:2 diet I can eat normally most of the time. Denying myself food on the fast days is much more bearable, because I know I can eat whatever I want tomorrow. And miraculously, when tomorrow comes I eat quite modestly.

One week on the diet is early days. Maybe it will get harder as I go on. I have no idea if I have benefitted health wise, and I have not even bothered to weigh myself and probably won’t. But I feel fine and this looks like something I could do for a very long time.

One thing I think is a must, is to plan my menu for the fast day, and to eat something I like. The right food needs to be to hand, or I might be easy to eat something I shouldnt. I also need to be busy, the busier the better. The less time I have to think about food the less I miss it.

What did I eat on the fast days? I know lots of people recommend low carbs and high protein. I don’t agree with this, or at least my body doesn’t. I need starch and fruit and vegetables. I have to agree that refined carbs are not ideal and try to avoid those, but my body demands healthy carbs. I don’t fight that, because on one of the science podcasts I listen to (science is my other hobby besides textiles), they were talking about a research study that compared various diets with different protein, carb and fat percentages. The take home message was that the mice on the high protein/low carb diet were the leanest, but had the shortest life span. The mice on the high carb/low protein diet were fatter, but lived 30% longer on average. 30%! Ok, so they were talking about rodents, but that is still something to think about.

This was what I ate:

– a porridge made with one whole egg, a spoon of oats and a spoon of milk powder, plus enough water for a pleasing consistency, microwaved

– five raw almonds for morning tea

– two wholemeal crisp breads with duck a l’orange pate, a couple of slices of tomato and lettuce for lunch

– a small tomato and a small plum for dinner one day, and 250g of paw paw on the other

I also had a white cup of tea, no sugar, on waking and lots of camomile and mint tea throughout the day.

I am not setting myself up as a nutrition guru here, I’m sure lots of people could cram more nutrients into the 500 cals, but I was happy with what I was eating and had no trouble sticking to my fast. That’s enough for me. I’m sure I can find other things that work just as well, variety is the spice of life after all. Smoked salmon looks like a nice alternative to the pate.

So watch this space. If you see me shrinking in my photos over the next few months you will know that the weight loss aspect is working. The other health benefits are harder to measure, but I am hoping to feel better, and maybe feel a bit younger too. The proof of the pudding, as they say …….   😊

Pants – Some Eye Candy

Ok, I will never look like this without a radical starvation diet, giant platform shoes, or better, a total body transplant. So why struggle to play a game I can never win? Instead, I decided to think outside the square and go for quite a different aesthetic. Pinterest is really invaluable here. It allows you to be inspired by the best available from all over the world, not just by what you can see in your local shopping centre, or what your friends are wearing, or, heaven forbid, what you see in the women’s mags. It also shows you that you are not alone. There are plenty of talented designers out there who are also bored with the classic shape. And not because they are experiencing a dire shortage of thin, leggy models. Once you have recalibrated your taste buds away from the conventional, you will see that there is a smorgasbord of alternatives to choose from.

And that is just the beginning, there are many more interesting options on my Pinterest board.

Once you let go of the idea that you need to conform to the classic pants shape, which does us pears no favours, you are on your way to feeling much better about yourself and your body shape.

Harem Scare’em

When I departed from the norm I did so with quite an extreme shape: low crotch, very voluminous harem pants. I have since expanded my repertoire to a couple of other styles, but I still like them a lot.

Here they are, an Issey Miyake design, no less.

An online friend kindly gifted me the now OOP pattern, and I made quite a few pairs, both for winter and summer. They turned out to be very tricky regarding fabric choices. I found out quickly that knits tend to look cheap. You need a woven, drapey enough not to be too bulky, and preferably something that does not crush too much, because of the bulk in the crotch area. A big ask, but I did succeed with several pairs, some with very thin cotton, almost a voile but a tad less sheer, and also in a Korean high tech knit/woven. I wore those pants enthusiastically, frequently and almost nothing but, as far as pants were concerned, for more than a year.

As I said, I still wear them now quite happily, but I have moved on with my sewing. The extreme harem look is all very well, and where I live harem pants are fairly common, but the look is too distinctive to wear exclusively. What finally gave me the push to look for a new pattern was a trip to Brazil, where I expected to do a lot of walking in very hot weather. What does that have to do with anything, I hear you ask. Well, the answer is simple, if a bit embarrassing: abrasion. The main advantage of pants over skirts in summer is that they protect your inner thighs. Low crotch pants don’t do that.

I was looking for a pants style that would, when I discovered the Tina Givens patterns and I thought I would give her Phoebe pants a try.

Of course all of Tina Givens pants have a low crotch as well, but this is much easier to fix than with the Issey Miyake pants. I eliminated it by adding length at the leg hem and taking off an equal amount at the waist. This moves the crotch upwards. The Phoebe pants have an inset panel all along the side, which gives you a nice vertical line breaking up the expanse of fabric. And pleats and a cuff at the ankle, which I also like. I don’t do the pockets because I don’t want the bulk, but lots of people prefer to put up with bulk in favour of pockets. Lucky when can sew and please ourselves!

This was my first try.

A bit too loose in the hips when seen with a tank top, too wide in the leg, makes me look short and squat. Of course, with a Lagenlook top all that becomes irrelevant, thank goodness. I no longer need to try to look slim, tall and leggy.

I still decided that I liked my Phoebe pants fairly fitted through the hips, with just enough ease for comfort, so that is how I made the black pair below. The actual shape of the crotch curve is a definite non-issue with these, as it is then same front and back. Tina suggests to fold your fabric so you have 4 layers and cut all 4 pattern pieces at once. What could be simpler? Of course it is it is true that, when you eliminate the low crotch, the fit could be not as good as a pair with a proper crotch curve, depending on your shape. Not a problem for me, as they fit pretty well, and in any case, no one will ever see this area under a Lagenlook top. I do make the back higher than the front, to accommodate the aforementioned generous rear end of mine. However, if you are a purist, you could transfer the crotch curve from a pattern that fits you well to the Phoebe. Yay for frankenpatterns!

I have posted the first two pics before when discussing the Fave Top, and you probably didn’t even notice the pants, which is how it should be. The pants are the supporting cast, not the focus when you are a pear shape. The last photo is the pants worn with the Zelda dress, sans ruffle and with short sleeves and bodice part taken from the Tessuti Eva dress.

And below is my latest variation, with horizontal pin stripes. Hard to see those in the photo unless you click it to enlarge. I have eliminated the side panel because I did not want to have the stripes go the other way, and making them go the same way as in the main part of the pants would have given me a headache trying to match them all exactly. Normally having the inset with the stripes going the other way would not be such a bad idea, but I had already played with the direction of the stripes with the top, and more would have been too much. I also wanted to make these pants more tapered to the ankle instead of gathered into a cuff.

Not sure the top is right in this combo. Too much volume perhaps at the sides, too long? I always find it hard not to use up all the fabric I’ve got, but at least it’s easier to cut a bit off than to join it on. We shall see after I have worn it once or twice.

Another possible interesting variation is the detail on these Oska pants. This would not be too hard to do with the Phoebe pattern as a starting point.

It looks like you cut the hem longer at the outer side seam than the inside seam, then take out the extra with the tuck. Bless Oska for a photo with stripes, they make it so much easier to work out how it is done.

Some Thoughts on Pants

I have been thinking about pants for a while, and about what constitutes flattering pants for my figure type. Kate’s recent post on Jan 13 gave me the push I needed. The article discusses different variations of the classic pants shape suitable for various figure types.

But I very seldom wear classic pants and I don’t wear jeans. Ever. I do like jeans on other people and this is not a value judgement. I wore them a lot from my early teens, when they appeared on the fashion radar in Europe, to my early fifties. Then I saw the light and realised that they did me no favours.

Just to be clear on this. A pair of jeans on a slim and leggy woman looks fantastic.

If I could look like that I would be wearing jeans. With bells on. But the reality is that I am a pronounced pear. Short legs, big bum and thighs, not to mention saddlebags. Even when I was very slim it was an uphill battle to find jeans that made me look good. These days I am a couple of kilos above the normal weight range, which is eons above the weight of that model. Not to mention the long legs >sigh<. No matter what I do to my body, it will never look like that.

A few years ago I got serious about wanting a flattering jeans pattern and did some comparisons of different ones to see what looked best on me.

Clearly, the pink pair on the left are the worst. This taught me to steer clear of any pattern that curves in below the hips.

The middle pair is actually not a jeans pattern but a classic straight leg pant that I used as a comparison to see if jeans looked any good on me at all. They do. The ones on the right look fine. They taper in a straight line towards the ankle without the curve inwards of the pink pair.

But I was 6-8 kgs lighter when these pictures were taken. And I still wore high heels and platforms happily every day. This makes quite a difference to proportions if you have short legs like me.

This is the difference in look from bare feet or flats, to medium high heels to very high platforms. Alas, I have sworn off high heels and platforms for everyday wear. I am now only willing to undergo this torture for special occasions, which means pretty rarely. Since I have discovered the daily comfort of flats, style has had to take a back seat. The fact that you need full mountaineering kit to get up to our new house from the car port may have had something to do with it too.

So my high heels have been shown the door, my jeans pattern has been retired and my dress pants are hanging out in the back of my wardrobe, twiddling their thumbs and waiting for a meeting with an important corporate customer to see the light of day. I still take care to dress conservatively for the latter. But in my ordinary day to day life I have thrown caution to the wind. Instead of striving for long, lean and leggy I have gone for short and round. Of course the quest for the perfect pair of pants goes on, but it is no longer in the least about crotch curves and drag lines, but about proportion and a pleasing overall silhouette. If you are a shape like me and interested in liberating yourself from the tyranny of conforming to the classic pants shape, then read all about my ongoing quest in my next post.

MOG Troubles

So I thought making the dress would be a doddle. After all, I had made it twice before and loved it. It wasn’t hard. Quite a quick, easy sew apart from the topstitching, the fabric I was planning to use was right for it, so what could possibly go wrong? I was going to shorten it by 10cm and use a slightly different bodice, but so what?

The first problem I ran into was that the flared bodice I had substituted did not support making the large tuck, or flange, that hides where the skirt is gathered onto the bodice. I tried making it separately and inserting it into the seam like giant piping, but that didn’t work at all.

So I took it apart again, ditched the flange thinking I could add a sort of band over the top of the seam instead and kept going. And going. It wasn’t until I had completely finished the dress that I thought of taking some photos. They are soo much more revealing than the mirror. What looked in the mirror like a slightly puffy short cocktail dress, different to my usual style but not bad, looked MUCH worse in the photos. There were pinch lines above the bust, even though I have used  the bodice before, know that it fits me well and that there was plenty of room for the bust.

 

Yikes. And the overall silhouette was very wrong. The bodice looks as if it is too small, with the obvious pinch lines above the bust, and then the dress continuous to flare out into that voluminous skirt.  Double yikes! I’m not slim, but, to put it bluntly, I look fatter than I ought to.

So I told DH to ditch our plans for the next day, Sunday, as I would be communing with my seam ripper. I took the bodice off the skirt for the second time, after serging that wretched seam twice, because I didn’t catch everything on the first pass. Ugh. Miraculously the skirt part survived this well, the dupioni must be stronger than it looks. It has about 15% poly in it, as I was informed by the owner of the fabric shop and confirmed myself by burn test later. This must have been the very first time I was glad I had some poly to work with. The thick silk threads frayed terribly, but somehow the bit of poly must have held it all together. I only hope the fabric will still breathe when I need it, but the 85% silk content must be doing something.

I recut the bodice, using my faithful old pattern of a straight bodice without darts or closures. It comes from the most unpromising pattern, but it has served me well for many dresses, being exactly loose enough not to require a zipper, but fitted enough to look good on me.

Here is the shape of the Eva bodice, shortened by 5cm (what was I thinking).

And here is the shape of the straight bodice.

Not that much of a difference, but quite enough apparently. This bodice is 40cm long, but the flange will take out about 7-8cm. To make it, you attach the bodice to the skirt and then make a wide tuck into the bodice just above the seam and topstitch. I just love the look of the flange, it looks so much neater than the exposed gathers where the skirt is joined. It also echoes the skirt extension piece at the bottom.

All up the altered dress is about 8cm longer, which is not a lot, but it does improve the proportions. A lot of people don’t like the tea length, thinking it is frumpy, but it was a compromise. I would have preferred to make the dress longer, but I had told the South American rellies that the dress code was cocktail, so I felt compelled to stick to it. They couldn’t believe you would wear short dresses to a wedding, to them it seemed strange enough to ask for confirmation, so for me then to turn up in a maxi wouldn’t be the right thing to do.

Anyways, here is the finished dress. I like it much better now, the difference may be subtle but it no longer looks as if I have squashed myself into a bodice that is too small, which is never a good look. The fitted bodice with the flange looks so much sharper, while it will still be comfortable to wear. DH is not mad about the skirt, and I can see why, but close up it does look more interesting than a plain skirt would have been. Unfortunately I don’t have a stylist running around arranging the skirt so it looks perfect for the photo. In real life the fabric is so beautiful that it makes the outfit all by itself, just a pity that my sparkly silver shoes don’t come out well in the photo.

 

Saturday looks like a nice sunny day according to the forecast, we will have the wedding overlooking our beautiful Sydney harbour, and I am hoping that DS and his beloved, together with all our guests, will have a wonderful time.

Once Is Not Enough

I am still new at this blogging, and it seems I have somehow managed to take an already published post and turn it back into a draft. So I published it, again, only to find that there was quite a bit missing. Looks like I somehow overwrote the finished post with an earlier draft.

Never mind. Please bear with me, I will eventually get the hang of it. Probably my issue is that I write the blog on multiple devices, not to mention multiple applications such as in the browser, in the WordPress app and both on the iPad and the laptop. I will eventually work out a way of keeping out of trouble while still using all of the above.

So here are the pics again that somehow got lost.

Fabric

Fabric with enhancement

The dress is finished and I have written up the post for it. Just waiting for a chance to take the photos and I’ll be able to publish a review on PR and more details on the blog.

Mother of the Groom (Again!)

I only have one son, but due to circumstances he is obliged to have two weddings, to the same girl I might add, so I get to be the MOG twice.

His beloved is of Italian descent, but her grandparents migrated to Brazil. She has a big family back home she is very close to, not to mention friends, so understandably she wanted to have a celebration at home. The snag was, that the paperwork for a non-Brazilian to get married in Brazil is monumental. For starters, marriages and divorces are recorded on a person’s birth certificate in Brazil, so when you want to marry you present your birth certificate to prove that you are single. Of course an Australian birth certificate has no such information. So how coupd DS prove to the authorities that he was not already married? Tricky. They decided to have everything but the legal formalities in Brazil, and then another wedding for the Australian family and friends in Sydney, this time actually signing the papers and making it official.

Some of you may have read my review of my MOG dress and remember that I was a bit apprehensive of how I would get on with so many people I didn’t know it a culturally quite different environment. But the wedding in Brazil was truly awesome. I love gardens lit up at night, and the tables were set up in an open air pavilion. The flowers were truly sensational, as was the samba dancing. I hate dancing normally as I have two left feet and feel too self-conscious, but there is no escaping that rhythm and joy de vivre and I had a wonderful time. While some of the Brazilians are fabulous dancers and quite intimidating to watch, soon everyone from the kids to the grandmas were on that dance floor and any thought of feeling awkward or self-conscious went right out of the window.

I fear the Sydney version will be far more pedestrian, but with a bit of luck it will have a charm of its own. We are having lunch at a venue right on the harbour, and provided the weather behaves itself it should be lovely.

Of course being the MOG means I need a MOG dress. I could wear the same dress again, but where would be the fun in that?

There is no more fabulous Dutch silk in my stash, so I am doing a Scarlett O’Hara,, which is one of my specialties. Meaning that I am using some silk dupioni meant for curtains. It was a bargain, probably because vibrant cobalt blue is very unfashionable for home dec, far too dark for curtains, impractical for bedding and totally unsuitable for upholstery. But just right for a MOG. It is a very dressy colour, and as an additional bonus everyone will be able to locate me instantly.

True to form I will be using a TNT pattern, inspired by Lyn Mizono

as interpreted by the incomparable Shams in her tablecloth skirt.

I could have looked at the photo of the Lyn Mizono dress for 100 years without figuring out the pattern, but thanks to Shams I don’t have to.

I have made two of these dresses so far, one for winter and one summer. Naturally this version will be sleeveless and I will try to make it a bit shorter as the wedding will be cocktail dress.

 

Fun With Adultery

Ha, that made you look, didn’t it? Unfortunately it is entirely false pretenses, as there is nothing salacious in this post. I have not turned to swinging in my dotage, nor is there some scandal to be exposed, if you pardon the pun, among the geriatrics on NSW’s sunny Central Coast.

What I adulterate is patterns, and first up I want to apologise to all you wonderful indie designers who publish very professionally drafted patterns, which no doubt are thoroughly tested before you publish for sale. You don’t deserve my meddling, but that doesn’t mean that I will stop doing it. I can’t draft a pattern to save myself, but I sure can’t help but play around with patterns made by those who can.

A classic example is the Tessuti Lily Linen dress dress. 

  
I have only ever used the sleeveless version, as the sleeves don’t seem to suit my narrow, but very square shoulders, but I sure have made this pattern a lot with every variation I could think of. Let me see:

Maxi length

• 2 in linen
• 1 in cotton interlock
• 1 in a wool double knit
• 1 in a viscose knit
• 2 cotton voile underdresses/slips

Original length

• 1 in cotton with tucks
• 1 in batik
• 1 in cotton sateen as a bubble dress

And that isn’t even mentioning the tunics. You can see that this pattern was $10 extremely well spent. Here are some pics.

This was my first maxi, in a beefy linen, and I was experimenting with the hem. Below is the final version. You turn the sides back at the side seams about 20cm, then have a button and loop arrangement to hold them there. You could just stitch it down, but that makes ironing difficult. You can also wear one side up if you want. The details are here.

Another version of the same, in a linen batik I bought in Bali (for peanuts!).

Next a tucked variation. This is maxi length, but the tucks make it shorter. I also extended the shoulders into cap sleeves. Underneath is another maxi Lily, as an underdress/slip. For details see here.

A bubble dress, achieved by shortening the Lily to 90cm, then drafting a bottom skirt piece from the hem turned upside down. A better explanation is here.

Another maxi version, this time in a knit. I love the hippie vibe, but the dark brown cotton interlock is already fading after a couple of washes. I will need to overdye it if I want to keep wearing it. My TNT t-shirt pattern was used for the bodice part and sleeves.

And finally a tunic tunic version with a cowl.

Oh, and before I forget: I always cut the back of the Lily on the selvages, not on the fold, and do a topstitched CB seam. This not only saves a lot of fabric, but it also gives you a nice vertical line at the back, which is slimming.
Link back to Rums

The Fave Top

I make all my clothes, with the exception of the odd piece of knitwear and some leftovers I still wear from the time when I bought RTW. Working full-time and taking my grandma duties seriously, this is only possible because I use almost exclusively TNT patterns and I have a liking for simple fashion unencumbered by too many details. I don’t even like pockets, as I think they tend to add bulk where it is not wanted and often harbour forgotten tissues which turn into disasters in the wash.

What is a TNT pattern? TNT is not a brand, but an acronym for tried-and-true. I use a small number of patterns that work for me over and over, only very occasionally adding a new one and dropping one that has been overused. All these patterns are simple, suit my body shape and fit into my current preferred style of dressing, which is Lagenlook of the Japanese persuasion. There are other styles of LL, the Edwardian, which is too frilly for me, the Magnolia Pearl which is ditto, and the Scandinavian, which relies on pretty, multicoloured fabrics I sadly don’t have access to. So Japanese it is, which is VERY simple and mostly neutrals, although I break out occasionally under the influence of seasonally induced madness (springtime!), to use some bright and cheerful colours for a change.

One of my staple patterns has been the Tessuti Fave Top and its variations.

So far I have made 2 in silk, 7 in linen including linen knit, one in cotton gauze, one in cotton/silk voile, and 8 in cotton or rayon knits or a mixture thereof. Phew! Why so many?

First of all, I love the pyramid shape and the simple but current style. Simple enough that sewing it up in different fabrics and prints makes it sufficiently different for most non-sewists I come into contact with not to notice that it is the same pattern. (Yes, strange but true!). If the dropped pointy hem wasn’t so much in fashion right now it would be quite another matter, but every second woman out in public seems to be wearing this, so my slew of Fave Tops blend right in.

Then it is an incredibly quick sew, especially when you have made it before. Two pieces, four seams, hems at bottom and sleeves and a bias strip around the neck. I can turn one out from go to woe in 90 minutes. Whenever I feel like sewing but don’t have much time, which is all too often, I go for this pattern.

This is the sort of conversation I tend to have with myself before making yet another one of these tops:

Me: It’s the weekend, time to sew up some of that stash. It’s getting warm enough to wear all that linen I bought on my last trip

Me: Oh goodie, what will you make? There is lots of interesting stuff on your pinterest board you could try.

Me: Weeeell, I don’t have a lot of time and I don’t really want to muck around with developing a new pattern from a pinterest picture. Let’s just do something nice and simple and quick.

Me: Ok, so make that shirt you have been meaning to for a while. You really like the last one you made and if you wait much longer it will be too warm to wear anything with long sleeves.

Me: Mmmm, I want to do a proper cuff and sleeve tab next time and I don’t feel like mucking around with that either right now.

Me: Fair enough. Something without a sleeve tab then.

Me: I think I’ll go for something I can be sure will work. That nice geometric linen was quite expensive, and I can’t get more of it if I mess it up. Something loose and comfy…

Me: Looks like another fave top then. That must be number 6 or 7. Don’t you think people might notice that you wear the same thing over and over?

Me: Nah… different fabric. Nobody will suspect a thing.

And so the Fave Top it is made yet again. Here are pics of some of my versions:

Rayon knit, true to pattern

Silk woven, lengthened, cuffed sleeve

Cotton/Silk voile, lengthened body, shortened cuffed sleeves

Rayon knit, long sleeves

China silk, lengthened body, shortened cuffed sleeves

Crinkle linen, cuffed 3/4 sleeves, lengthened body

You will notice that some of these are really tunics. The leopard print top was the first one I made and I followed the pattern exactly. But like a cook who can’t follow a recipe, I can’t make a pattern more than once before I start to meddle. I don’t like wasting fabric, and I like hiding my rather generous rear, so if I have a bit more than the 1.5m required I will use up what I have and make a tunic.

Below is the idea I followed to lengthen my Fave Tops to tunics. I would LOVE to attribute this, because I think it is such a good idea, but all I can find is the image. It doesn’t seem to be attached to any web page or author. So my apologies for not giving credit where it is due.

My own changes to the pattern are to make the sleeves wider, lengthen them to full length, shorten them to short sleeves usually with cuffs and making the tunic wider at the bottom hem.

I do this by tilting the pattern pieces like in the pic above. The CF still touches the fold of the fabric, otherwise the neck would be too wide, but the bottom of the CF is a good few cms away from the fold, adding width as CF. Of course if you don’t like all this volume you shouldn’t be doing that. With a drapey fabric you probably won’t notice the difference, but with a more substantial linen you will get an exaggerated pyramid shape like this.

Love that shape!

A Bit of Dyeing

Its not easy to buy good quality cotton knits in Australia. I have NEVER bought a dark coloured tee-shirt that would not have looked badly faded after a single season, and sometimes after a couple of washes. Why is that? Why do bought tees go out of shape, fade badly and look disreputable after a short period of time? I’m sure the clothing industry knows the answer, and I’m sure built in obsolescence has a lot to do with it. Good quality fabrics dyed with colour fast dyes are available, but not in Australian shops. Not sure what it is like where you live.

Cotton can be colourfast, but you seem to have no option but to dye your own fabric. RIT or Dylon won’t do it, you need the experts. Dharma Trading has been an institution for textile artists for a long time, and their dyes are pretty bomb proof as far as fading is concerned. There is also an Australian dye specialist called Batik Oetoro. They used to be in Randwick near the Prince of Wales Hospital, but have moved, conveniently for me, to Newcastle. They do mail orders and their dyes and expert advice are great. Marian, my former art teacher, used to buy her fabric paints and dyes from them and they were fabulous quality. I also purchased some low temperature black dye called Cool Wool at Batik Oetoro and it has served me well with a number of fabric buying bargains, where the fabric was a beautiful wool but in an off colour that nobody wanted. Overdyeing with black of varying strength will either tone down the colour or obliterate it altogether. A print never disappears completely, but you can mute the colours or turn it into a subtle black on black design.

The op shop sheet I used to muslin the Zelda dress last week was showing signs of fading, too subtle to be apparent in the photos but visible in real life. I don’t think I would have worn the dress much because of that, but I really liked the shape. So I bit the bullet and decided to overdye it with Procion dyes to freshen up the fabric. I think the simple Tina Givens styles really need superior fabrics to come into their own. Linen would do it, silk certainly, or at least a cotton jacquard or gauze or a nice voile print. The utilitarian cotton I had used was pushing it, and the fact that it wasn’t pristine sure didn’t help.

The easiest way to dye is in the washing machine, as the process is rather long and pretty boring. It takes a good two hours all up to dye something a dark colour, less for a pastel, and you need to agitate the dye bath frequently, meaning you can’t do much else during that time. I couldn’t use my machine because it leaks and I didn’t want dye all over my laundry floor. You need to be very careful not to splash the dye on anything while agitating the dye bath, or while mixing up the dye powder. The process uses a lot of water, especially for rinsing out the dye, but I am very happy with the result. The cotton now looks brand new, and hopefully will keep its fresh colour for a long time.

One word of warning. Dyeing can be a bit unpredictable, even for the experienced, and the colours can be hard to match. When I overdyed the purple I was trying to tone the colour down more towards a dark jacaranda, but it ended up close to a dark blue. Not a tragedy and I rather like it, but not what I had aimed for.

One thing to remember is that dyeing is transparent, not opaque, so the original colour of the fabric will influence the outcome. Any stains or blotches won’t disappear completely either, so a good hot wash to remove any stains is essential. Here are the instructions if you are interested.