Colour Palette... Base Costumes.

Dye Experimentation!

So where on earth do we start?! Myself and Bethan had a mammoth task of creating the right colour combination to match the base costume designs to give us the right ombre effect.... easy right?

Putting logic together we methodically went through the dye room cupboard seeking out the dyes we felt would work within our colour palette. The colours we chose were Black, Elephant Grey, Coffee, Reindeer Beige, Havana Brown, Desert Dust and Golden Glow.

We tested each of the dyes over a 20 minute time period, with the three types of cotton fabric that the Bethan had chosen for the costumes. The results look like this! A beautiful colour chart of the dyes turning light to dark.

Even though this pain-stakingly long process took forever, the results were well worth it! We could clearly see what dyes worked best and what ones didn't. After this we were able to narrow down the colours and start mixing colours with ratios of dye and our recipes.

Finally we tested the different ratios with the ombre dip dying, as seen bellow.

I have learnt that dying is NOT a quick process! Experimenting this far has taken a lot longer than we anticipated and problem solving textiles is troublesome. My job is not going to be easy!