Playing with Dyes -- Safflower and Saffron

And now is the time on RH when we dye!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I believe this German lady's riding doublet was dyed with safflower. I have not seen the doublet in person (or even any colour photographs), but from Arnold's description of "tannish red faded from a deep peach", it sounds like safflower to me. The dye in safflower is very light sensitive. When exposed to daylight, the red fades to a tan.

The description of the original colour as "peach" also points to safflower. While considered a red dye, safflower actually has two dyes in it -- red and yellow. The red dye reacts with vegetable as well as animal fibres, where the yellow dye will only remain on animal fibres. When you dye cotton or linen with safflower, it looks orange to begin, but when you rinse it, all the yellow dye washes off and leaves nothing but a pure pink behind. A friend described it as "You've made Barbie pink!" On silk, the results are quite different. Both the red and yellow dyes react with the fibre, producing a peach to orange colour.

You can see the results of a silk coat I dyed in this article. The exterior is silk and the lining linen. http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/index.php?s=&c=8&d=116&e=&f=&g=&a=167&w=2

Experiments I've done with safflower on silk and linen can be found here: http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/japanese/safflower.html

Saffron, by contrast, produces a clear, bright yellow colour, not the orange we typical think of when speaking of a monk's "safffron robes". This clear yellow colour is the same on linen and silk. To read about my experiments with saffron, read this: http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/irish/saffrondyeing.html

To construct this doublet, I am going to use six materials:

• silk satin dyed with safflower (base fabric)
• silk satin dyed with saffron (decorative strips)
• silk cord dyed with saffron (decorative strips) http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/index.php?s=&c=143&d=&e=&f=&g=&w=21&q=1&p=293&r=Y
• silk cord and thread dyed indigo blue by the manufacturer (decorative strips) http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/index.php?s=&c=143&d=&e=&f=&g=&w=21&q=1&p=293&r=Y
• silk ribbon dyed indigo blue by the manufacturer (hem trim and facing) http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/index.php?c=111&d=156&w=24&r=Y
• linen dyed with safflower (lining)

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© 2007 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Pattern Development, stage two

In September, I posted about two lady's riding jackets that I was musing about and intended to make into a pattern. Today I'm ready to start getting more specific and talk in detail about one of the garments, the 1620s Riding Doublet in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum. Here's a fairly horrible picture of it:

What you cannot see in this picture is the absolute gaudiness of this doublet. Sure, it looks like a light-coloured jacket with decorative braid sewn diagonally all over it. But what you can't see is the colour. And furthermore, no one can see the colour it used to be when it was new.

This unassuming little black and white photograph belies a cacophony of colour. Today, the ground is a tannish peach satin. Well, that's the colour that safflower fades to when it's exposed to light. When it was newly dyed, it was likely a bright salmon.

The interior is pink linen. Guess what colour safflower dye makes on linen...

The diagonal decoration is not just couched cord but 25mm (1") wide strips consisting of a peach satin ground with bias-cut yellow satin strips further adorned with yellow couched cord and blue thread. The fronts, seams and hems are decorated with wider 41mm (1.6") strips that are even more gaudy with the addition of blue couched cord. Let me try and illustrate what the originals would have looked like. All the diagonal strips on the jacket looked like this:

And the wider strips on the side seams, center front and back, and hems looked like this:

Alterations to the jacket indicate that it may have originally been a young man's doublet that was altered to fit a woman. The side seams were widened by the addition of strips of blue velvet, embroidered to match the other decorative strips. These appear to date to a time close to the construction of the doublet. In the eighteenth or early ninteenth century, the doublet was altered again, presumably for wear as a costume. Strips from the shoulder wings were removed and added to the center back seam to widen it.

More to come...

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© 2007 Kass McGann. All Rights Reserved. The Author of this work retains full copyright for this material. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial private research or educational purposes provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Pattern Development, the first stage

I started this blog to give you all insight into the pattern development process. But since I started it, everything I've spoken about has already been in development. So I really haven't taken you from idea to concept through development and testing and into production yet. That's about to change.

Today while doing research on a totally different subject, I started thinking about riding costume. Those of you who know me know that I love riding costume from almost every era. So no matter what I'm researching, if I see something about riding costume, I fixate on it. Now I have to write about this so I can get back to work on the thing I'm supposed to be working on...

I've been looking at two different riding outfits from the 17th century. One is a jacket dating to 1625-30 that is housed in the Nationalmuseum in Nurnberg, Germany. Another is a garment described in detail in Le Tailleur Sincere, a french treatise on tailoring that dates to 1671.

The problems: the Nurnberg riding outfit is just a jacket. The article in which it is described shows a number of "similar" jackets on women on horseback. But my copy of this article is dark and I cannot see details. So I'm going to have to track down these paintings elsewhere if possible. In any case, many of the painting show women near horses, not on them. So I'm not even sure if the clothing the ladies wear can be termed "riding costume". There is no matching petticote extant so it's hard to know if there's anything different from a regular, non-riding petticote.

The description in Le Tailleur Sincere is sketchy. It uses sixths, thirds, and twelfths of French ells (which are different from English ells and the author does not explain clearly what measure is meant). Also it does not show a made up version of the outfit. Seeing it in my mind, it sounds odd -- more like a sailor's smock from the Elizabethan period or an ECW soldier's coat than a post-Restoration lady's riding jacket.

My next step will be to make replicas of each. I think I cannot learn more until I see them made up, particularly the 1670s one.