The Indigo Dress

First you need to scour your fabric. This is extremely important for the dyeing process.  Dry and iron your fabric if necessary. I laid out my fabric and then laid the pattern pieces over it. I then cut out rectangles for each pattern piece. I folded each piece in an accordion fan with a span of 4". I then foled that in triangles in a way that exposes most ends for better color effects. I ended up with a triangle and bound it with strings and elastics.

Prepare the indigo vat. We had a 6 tsp Student Vat , I dipped my pieces in once for about 15 minutes. 

Leave you pieces to dry, be sure to unfold because it will take a very long time to dry. I unfolded after 48 hours and hung to dry 6 hours. Now that its dry you need to soak the pieces in  1/4 cup white vinegar, 4 L water . This will help brighten and fix the colour. 

After your fabric is clean and dry, press out any wrinkles. Lay fabric out and position your pattern. try to line up any patterns, make sure the direct of grain and designs are the same. 

Cut out pattern. Sew all darts on front, back and the skirt (if any.)

Sew side seams together. Bind with bias tape for a clean edge. I used single fold, narrow tape. 

      

Do the same for the shoulder seams. 

       

Sew skirt pieces at side seams with RST. Gather waist of skirt evenly.  With RST sew skirt to body maktching CF, and side seam notches. Bind with Bias tape. I used single fold wide tape. 

       

Press  waist seam.

Sew invisible zipper at center back. Continue sewing down center back.

      


Finish  neck hole, arms holes and hem with bias tape.

       

Preparing an Indigo Vat

 Put about 20 L of hot water (110°-140° F) in a plastic pail ( we are using two smaller pails so do each pail with 10L of hot water). A water heater is handy if you need the vat for a long period of time. 

  

Make up two cups of very hot water with ¼ teaspoon of Soda Ash. Stir well. (This is our alkaline). Divide into two cups, one cup for one pail one for the second pail.

   

Indigo requires an alkaline environment of about PH 11 (PH 8 for protein fibres). Neutral PH is 7. If you don't get 11PH, add more soda ash in small amounts until you get it. We ended up need 3/4 tsp. If you add too much you need to add more hot water. 

   

Add ½ teaspoon of Thiourea Dioxide (removes the oxygen in the water) to each vat and stir.   Allow to “reduce” (de-oxygenate) for 15 minutes. 

Carefully lower the indigo stock solution into the vat being careful not to create bubbles that will introduce oxygen, pour ½ of the stock into each vat and stir. Allow to sit for about 30-60 minutes till ready to use.  

Be sure to wear gloves! 

Put your fabric in the indigo vat for 3-10 minutes per dip. The more you dip the darker the colour. 

Remove the fabric from the vat , careful not to create oxygen bubbles.

Oxidize for 20 minutes

Allow your fabric to oxidize for 24 hours before doing a mild vinegar rinse. Do 4tsp  of vinegar in 4L of water.  The vinegar rinse neutralizes the alkaline from the vat. 

 oxidize in the air for 24 hours then do a mild , about 4 tsps. Vinegar to 4 liters water. 

then just rinse and allow to dry.   

Instructions Credited to The Indigo Manual 

The Prom Dress Fitting

So as it turns out, she is not a mannequin shape but who is.  She has a shorter waist then the mannequin which cause the back to gap open and the sides to wrinkle. I pinned the extra fabric and will take it out in the next pattern. 

The sleeve fit her very nicely and she did not need gussets. I will be doing no alterations in the sleeve. 

The bust point needs to be lower 2 cm. 

To transfer this to a pattern, I traced out the pattern I used and measured the size and position of the dart. ex, 5 cm up, 6 cm wide, 15 cm long.

Measure how much you have to lower the bust point and mark on pattern.  Shorten darts if necessary.

The Sleeve Drape

 The sleeve block I used was from a size 8 dress bock. It fit very close to the dress form I was using, however my mannequin is a size 6 so that might have something to do with the extra few mm. I took these extra mm out in the under sleeve seam.

                                                                               **When sewing fine, satin fabric use a small (70) SHARP needle. This will help reduce snags in fabric. 

The sleeve block should have a front, back, elbow,  and shoulder notch.  Make sure all are very clear on fabric. Pin and sew dart.  Sew down under sleeve seam if you have sewn side seam.  You will then set in this sleeve by tunneling it through the arm hole,, RST, pinning as you match the notches and sew.

 If you have not sewn side seam you can pin the sleeve right sides together match the front, back and shoulder seams (shoulder seams must be sewn.) Sew sleeve to body, and then the sleeve closed with RST.

Of course if you cannot raise your arm you must add a little thing called a gusset. It is really easy to make! 

This is an image I found on my friend Google. 

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As you can see in the photo below I have sewn my gusset to my sleeve, now to be fair I added way to much in the height and regretted it.  Keep it olive shaped. 

Set into sleeve as normal, It should fit because it is a copy of that section of the pattern and should match. 

Like I said above, I had too much fabric in the gusset which caused for poor shaping.

Learn from my mistakes.  

Thee Needle Book

Start by scouring your fabric, if you do not scour the dye will not stain the fabric. Then you need to prepare your Indigo vat, I will show you how to do this soon but the vat I used was prepared by my instructor. We had a 6 tsp vat, which means we used 6 tsp of indigo to create the vat.

Next you need to prepare your fabric to dye.  I stitched straight gathering stitches into the fabric and pulled tightly. I wrapped the tails around and tied them to insure the piece would not come loose in the dye.

Next you need to soak your piece in water and squeeze tightly to get all the air out. Oxygen kills the dye vat so you need to be very about air bubbles being created when stirring or putting in/taking out the piece. Make sure you wear gloves! Be aware that if you hold it in one place you will see your finger print, some people let it loose in the vat (hard to find without creating bubbles) or tie a string to it and hangs it out (will see the string mark on fabric).

(My sample is the long tube tied up, the other sample is a silk chiffon with marbles tied into it)

Carefully put the piece into the vat and carefully sway the fabric in the vat. Don’t create bubbles. Leave it in for 3-10 minutes and carefully remove the piece from the vat. I do this by pulling the piece up on the side of the container and using my hand to stop any drips.

Leave it out to oxidize for 10 minutes. You should see the piece change from a yellow green colour to a blue. You can then decide if you want to dip in again to get a deeper colour or to leave it to dry.

If you decide to put it back in the vat, you do not need to soak it in the water as it is already soaked.

If you decide the colour is perfect then leave it to dry for 24 hours. Then you will need to soak it in vinegar for approx. 10 minutes.

So you have just dyed the cover of your needle book, you can do the lining at the same time if you wish. I used a simple raw cotton muslin. I used a thin sheet of store bought felt to use inside the cover to give it stability. I serged the felt to the wrong side of the cover and then place the lining to the right side. Serge 3 sides and the corners of the last, only leave a space large enough to turn right side. Turn and make sure the corners are square. Press very well, and turn in seam allowance on open seam. Whip stitch closed.

There you have your cover!

Now time to do your pages.

You will need wool (I used Corriedale), a piece of foam and a needle felting needle. Lay the wool over the foam and stab the needle into it repeatedly. The barbs on the needle felts the fibres with every stab. Keep lifting and turning the fibres or you will felt it into the foam.  Add more fibre to spot where necessary.

I then decided to shock my felted pages in hot water then in cold. I did this 3 times and let them dry. I then used a finishing needle felting needle and used it to clean up the loose hairs.

Trim down to the correct size of pages, and sew to cover.

I then decided that I need to add something to the cover so I added some polyester lace to the front. I did this by small stitches and same colour thread. I also though It needed a tie so I used a full embroidery thread and a darning needle to create this. I went in through the lining but not the cover and ran the thread through to outside of the cover. I could have sewn this in to avoid the knot. 

And here you go!!