It is getting hot now, being an El Niño year, so I thought long, loose linen dresses would be just the thing to keep me cool this summer.

For my first one I chose a pinkish-grey-mauve linen, which looks lovely, sophisticated and cool. But unfortunately it soon became clear that teamed with black this colour instantly turns to anaemic and washed out. Too late, once the black ink is on the fabric there is no way back.

So I finished the dress and took photos, which sometimes makes me change my mind. But this time it only confirmed what I had feared, the two colours did absolutely nothing for each other.

There is no way to change the black ink to something lighter, but thankfully the base colour is easy to overdye and I have a whole arsenal of dyes with which to attack this problem. Not that I would want to use them all at once. 🙂

The idea was to deepen the colour, to make it hold its own against the black. Dyeing can be a gamble, but I keep notes on previous dye projects which help a lot, and also have a fair bit of experience now. I am really happy with the result. The main thing to remember with linen is that you need only a fraction of the amount of dye that cotton takes for the same colour depth. I used as much soda ash as I would with cotton and there was very little dye left unfixed. This is great because that way it is much quicker to wash the garment out after dyeing than if there is lots of dye left in the water, and it’s much less wasteful too. And in case you are wondering, the printing ink is not affected by the dye.

So here is the dyed version (enthusiastically photo bombed by Amadeus, the Siamese kitten).

The pattern used is the Tessuti Lily linen dress, with the elbow length sleeves modified to cap sleeves.

Dye notes

  • 1 baby spoon of red(pink)
  • 1/2 baby spoon of jet black
  • 7 L water hot
  • 130g soda ash
  • 60 minutes fixation