to dye or not to dye...help me answer my question

[abendgules]

So I'm back to puttering with the Elizabethan gown 3Rs project.

Petticoat was fixed over the summer - taken apart, re-pleated onto a narrower band as cartridge pleats. A bit lopsided (more pleats on one side than the other! whoops) but noone will see it under my skirt.

Bodice: I've recut the neckline so it's square, and trimmed the lower back so it fits correctly. The sleeves have come off so I can reshape them into padded rolls. Some of the bones came out, as the neckline was straightened out. I've bought lacing tape so I can lace the bodice to the skirt, rather than using hooks.

As suggested by lacedwaist  I'm aiming for a middleclass outfit, c. 1580s or so: bodice, skirt, petticoats & foreparts, smock, probably detachable sleeves.

My big concern is the colour of the bodice and skirt. It's nagging at me. At one time I wouldn't have cared, but I'm growing more crotchety in my (SCA) old age.

I have a vague memory that in the 16th c, dark blue was either impossibly expensive, or deadly cheap, and suitable only for servants - too cheap for a middleclass woman. Does anyone else remember?

So I'm debating dyeing it. I can get machine-wash Dylon in a couple of shades of dark brown, and the colour stripper for pre-treating coloured things.
The trouble is that I'm not confident that the Dylon will 'stick'.

My past efforts at washing-machine dyeing have had good results, but they faded, particularly if you sweated into them. A bodice will definitely see some sweat, and I don't want it to stain my chemises.

Has anyone had good results with dyeing finished garments w/ Dylon? How well did it keep?

OTOH - can anyone clarify the business of the status of dark blue as a wearable late 16th c colour? I don't want to keep working on it  - adding sleeves and guards - only to decide that I want it in another colour. Now (after I've finished raw edges) is the time to decide...

Lia? Hedwig? other 16th c. mavins? any thoughts or references?

Comments

[jpgsawyer.livejournal.com]

I definitely remember that blue was considered only suitable for servants as it was a very cheap fabric in the 16thC, something to do with huge imports of the dye stuff.

That said I don't have references nor do I have any idea what level the fabric permeated up the class structure.

Good luck getting futher information.

[nickajordan.livejournal.com]

There's this, which suggests that blue was available to all but the brightness of the colour reflected the affluence of the wearer, since it required more processing. I have no idea how accurate this is, but it sounds reasonable to my uneducated mind.

[my-stitching.livejournal.com]

Not answering your question, but I thought you might be interested. There has been some recent research/experimentation on how to do the waistbands of El petticoats which seems to look very much like the images we have. I've not done it personally, but I'll see if I can describe it. You pleat and pin the petticoat as if you were folding a fan (or cartridge pleating, I suppose). The waistband is folded so that it fits over the skirt part (like normal). You hand sew one side of the pleats to one side of the waistband and the other side of the pleat to the other side of the waistband, if you know what I mean. So a cross section of the waistband area would be |-| sorta. As I said, I've not done it personally as I haven't done that period for ages, but it sounds cool to me. The entire write up was on Attack_Laurel 's blog.

Now, getting back to your question. I am almost postive that the Elizs had indigo but it was very expensive to import and process. I may be wrong, but if memory serves it is mentioned in sumptuary laws and was restricted. They had plenty of woad for blue, but it wouldn't have produced such a strong color.

[liadethornegge.livejournal.com]

From what I understand it, woad produces blue, which was cheaply available for everyone in the period. But Woad blue is not very light fast, so fades quickly. The intense blue would be more expensive to produce. I think that you may be thinking about lapis blue on illuminations - where blue was used in the very fancy books of hours because patrons could afford it and wanted to flaunt it. There it was used more than in real life to show it off.

But blue is certainly a viable colour for middle class English I'd think. I'm not a dye expert, or even amateur, so I can't speak to detailed facts about processes and dyestuffs.

But you can also think of it in terms of the second-hand clothing trade that was thriving at the time. You may not have afforded the best blues that were hideously expensive as new cloth, but you're retro-fitting the gown already - you could have bought it as a second-hand item in period and thus get a slightly bleached out version of the fine expensive blue.

Well, that's my random thought process of the entire thing. And definitely make sure that the skirt is firmly attached to the bodice in some manner. Lacing it in place works if you don't stitch it on.

[sandra-sk.livejournal.com]

Although I've done a lot of dyeing, I've never really looked into the sumptuary laws or anything similar, so I can't help you there. I have heard the "blue was so cheap that only servants wore it" comments, but they don't ring true to me. Indigo blue is available from more than 10 different plants found world wide, however in Europe it would have come from both woad (Isatis tinctoria) and the imported indigo (Indiagofera tinctoria). The exact same pigment (indigotin) is present in both plants, but there's way more pigment (upwards of 10 times) in the indigo plant. Therefore when they started importing indigo (16th C I believe), it really reduced the need for woad and put the woad growers/processers out of business. But both plants produce the exact same dye, exact same colour, same light-fastness etc.

Even with the importation of indigo, dyeing fabric was still a big job and indigo dyeing is one of the most complicated dyes to use. And the indigo had to be imported, which doesn't lessen the cost either. Finally, let’s face it, colours were limited - I wouldn’t disallow a lovely colour when I had only a relatively small colour palette to choose from.

re: machine dyeing. For best dyeing results with modern dyes, you need to use a dye specific to the type of fabric you're dyeing. Cellulose fibres (e.g. cotton) use different dyes than the protein fibres (e.g. wool). If your fabric has any sort of synthetic in it, you've added a whole new variable to the mix. Some synthetics will dye (e.g. nylon) while most won't.

Because the Dylon people don't know what type of fabric you'll be dyeing, they produce what's known as a union dye. These are a combination of protein and cellulose dyes and half of the dye is thus not useful for whichever fiber you're using. This means that there will be a lot of colour left in the dye liquor when you're finished. And if you don't rinse out the fabric really, really well, this unused dye just tends to sit on top of the fabric rather than penetrate into it. This means it will rub off (called "crocking" in the dye world), wash out in subsequent washes, or sweat out.

Given how much work you've put into the outfit, I would hesitate to recommend dyeing it. I think blue looks good on you, and I think the dress looks good in blue. Consider dyeing it maybe only if you do find some sort of definitive evidence about the "blue is for servants myth". And if you do find the evidence, I'd love to see it please!

[bend-gules.livejournal.com]

Only quick article I can find is in Drea Leed's archive, which repeats the 'blue is for servants' story.
Typically Drea's articles are fine, but today I note:
1. She doesn't include refs in this article
2. She has illustrated an article about 'Elizabethan' colours with images of Flemish peasants - yes, they're all 16th c, but they're two different cultures.
http://www.elizabethancostume.net/lowerclass/lcolors.html

Yup, definitely getting crotchetier...

[sandra-sk.livejournal.com]

We always add another layer of complexity whenever we start to use illuminations/paintings as a reference for costume colours, as the dye colours are very different from artists' pigments. And we never know if the artist is accurately representing a particular scene, or if it is an artistic impression. But we have very few extant fabric or costume pieces to base our work on, so we have to use pieces of art as well. It's a problem.

I do know that indigo blue is a very colour fast dye (compared to other natural dyes) - if you see some of the extant tapestries, you often see a field of flowers on a blue background. These backgrounds were often green, but the yellow dye used with the blue to make green has faded and disappeared. e.g. http://www.millefleurstapestries.com/2119 for a modern reproduction

I think Drea does good work and I tend to believe what she says (as I think others do). I wonder if she's not the originator of the "blue is for servants" idea, and it's just been repeated throughout the SCA? (I originally heard it through Tangwystl). Maybe send Drea a quick e-mail asking for more information re: blue for servants?

You mention too that she's using Flemish illustrations and that they're different cultures. I believe that there would also be a lot of variation within a particular culture as well. Heck, people in Ottawa dress very differently from people in Ottawa now, and those two cities are not very far apart. I doubt that people were so connected then that, if some household in London used blue for their servants, news of this would travel up to northern England and the people there would avoid blue to prevent them being mistaken for London servants. I also always tend to disbelieve blanket statements that imply that *all* people in blue were servants or lower class. Some probably were, some probably weren't.

[maredudd1066.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I can't give references, but Marian has done blue dyeing with indigo which is the same chemical as woad. A single dip gives a very pale blue. The more times you go through the whole dyeing process the darker it gets. This would seem to tie in with the dichotomy of blue is for poor/servants, and blue is for the very rich. We didn't manage much darker than "royal" blue no matter how often we overdyed.
It is worth noting that blue is also one of the easiest natural dyes to use on linen - possibly giving us the concept of "blue collar" workers (any colour being better than white for a manual worker).
The issue of dyes fading may be part of their conspicuous consumption - if everyone knows that what you are wearing will only look good a few times, then everyone can tell that the outfit is new.
I hope my ramblings make sense and are useful.

blue

[susana-stitches.livejournal.com]

If I may butt in here . . . Bess of Hardwick commissioned a sky-blue satin petticoat (embroidered, of course) as a gift for Queen Elizabeth, and there are a few other blue (watchet, blunket) garments in the Wardrobe accounts (ref: Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd). FWIW, Herbert Norris recounts (without footnotes) that a nobleman who was doing something in Queen Mary Tudor's coronation wanted to wear a blue velvet suit with gold embroidery, but had to get another color because the Queen was wearing blue velvet. The Tudor Tailor states that in the Essex Wills, 2% of petticoats are listed as blue - these were owned by women at various levels of middle-classishness. Blue is not an un-heard-of color. Hope this helps . . . I like blue, myself, and am looking for references in Spain & Germany in the 1560-1600 range.