Testing 1-2-3

Yesterday was Presidents Day as well as a Campus Furlough day, and so since I had the day off but couldn't really go do anything because many places were closed (also my husband was out of the house working on a game creation project, so he wasn't around to freak out for fear that I was about to dye the entire apartment blue), I did some practice dyeing!

I have "designed" the costumes for the modern class that I teach. This is a picture of what it should roughly look like.

The dance is about the Sea/Water, the creation of it, the movement of it, etc. The dance is abstract of course and as you can tell so is the costume. The idea for the costume is the blue of the water, the deeper down you go into the sea the darker it is, and when waves splash it often looks white and foamy or s"splashy"...hence the dark o light blue gradient and then the white swooshel over-top.

The costume consists of a tank leotard, jazz pants, and an "asymmetrical dress". Right now all of the are white. The pants and leotard are waiting for me to dye them blue. But before I delve into dyeing the real costumes I wanted to play around a little bit to get a feel for how the dye takes to the fabric, and how the color will/should look. Here are some test pant legs.
This was enough for me to figure out how I will go about dyeing the actual costumes!! For my test I used one dye bath (the left was navy blue and the right was royal blue because I didn't know what color would be the right blue), meaning that I used one color at one intensity or one level of concentration. For the actual costumes I will have 3 different dye baths each at different levels of dye intensity. First I will dye the entire garment in the bath that has only 1/4 amount of dye, then dip the garment to the appropriate level in a bath that has 1/2 amount of dye, then dip the garment to appropriate level in full strength. (intensity of dye is determined by amount of dye per 2 gallons of water) This will yield the actual ombre gradient that I desire. I am excited!!

Also I have decided to use Royal Blue dye because the Navy looks too purple as it goes lighter.

I can't wait to post pictures of the actual dyeing process as well as photos of the completed costumes!!