2020 Fashion on the Ration Challenge

skogar

Been out and about (away waling last weekend) so have not caught up with the thread for a bit so please excuse my late responses.  I didn't expect those sausage rolls to have lasted long. That ginger cake - my gran would said serve it with custard as a pudding and noone will know. However one of my favourite pugs does a ginger sponge with a ginger sauce and serve it with icecream - I'm sure with a ginger sauce and icecream it would be incredible - however it looks that good that the probability of it lasting long enough to be served with ginger sauce is slim.

The skirt looks great Laura - really practical. Thinking about it it is very rare that you see ladies out walking in skirts partly probably as skirtbrellas are not widely available for poor weather. :-) For many of the walks we do a skirt like that would work well (with, of course, a suitable skirtbrella in case of inclement weather), for high level routes in serious wind or exposed ridges I would probably wear something a bit different.

The early days of ladies mountaineering and climbing are full of tales noteable climbs in ankle length skirts and of ladies struggling with skirts which I'm sure were much less practical than yours. The 18 year old Felicité Carrel in 1867 made the first known attempt to climb the Matterhorn and reached what is now called the Col Felicité high on the Matterhorn but had to give up allegedly because she was in danger of being blown off due to the strong wind and the volumous skirt she was wearing. Other ladies left wearing their skirts and changed into easier to walk in attire when out of sight, leading to tales where skirts were swept away by avalanches or left behind on the summits of mountains and had to be returned for. So perhaps for the more serious alpine peaks you may want to consider making that pair of breeches.

Laura_Elsewhere

Oooh, my little sample arrived this morning of the sludge-spriggy needlecord! 

It's lovely stuff, light but strong, and it has a really nice feel to it - what posh designers call "it has a good hand"  

But it is very definitely a browny-sludge... so on Sunday - maybe! - we're going to experiment. I was given a set of Procion dyes a year back but haven't had the courage to try using them yet, as I mostly just use nice safe vinegar and food colouring to dye wool or silk yarn... but if I give this a bit of a green overdye, nothing too major, I should end up with darker green needlecord with paler green sprigs...! 

I suspect I'll still buy it anyway - but it would be interesting to see how it dyes (it's the same kind of stuff as machine-dye Dylon, but I get to choose the colour a bit more - in theory!)

@thriftwizard - thanks for sending the sample so quickly, and I look forward to placing my order once I decide how much I want  

thriftwizard

Procion's good stuff. I'm planning to try it in cloudy blue on some old damask tablecloths, using shibori stitching to try to achieve a subtle leaf pattern; the plan is to make them into a kimono, using the cut-out embroideries from stained 1950s tablecloths to decorate round the hem and make an obi sash too. I have all the "kit", now I just need to get round to actually doing it...

Laura_Elsewhere

I'm a bit scared of it, because of the warnings about its toxicity and never ever using any vessel or utensil that you ever want to use on food!  

But we'll try a small bit on Sunday, first on some plain linen and cotton, and then when i think the green is about right, on the sample I'll let you know - eeek!  

skogar

Laura - I'm sure that needlecord would look good dyed green - sounds great.

Throftwizard - I would love to see a photo of your kimono when you hae finished it - it sounds a lovely idea.

I'm afraid I am rather a chicken when it comes to dyeing things, the only dyeing I have done is some tie dyeing at school (more years ago than i care to remember). I have a lovely vintage wool blanket which is pale green. it was bought still in its original wrapping and is lovely and soft. the banket had been stored in someone's loft for a long time and the wrapping had split. the bits that were open had some dust on (I assume the lime mortar that drops down from old roofs), and it has sightly bleached the blanket in a few small areas close to the folds where the packaging was split. i would like to dye it to get it all the same colour but have put it off for 2 reasons 1. I am worried about ruining a nice wool blanket either by messing up the dying or felting it by accident 2. I am not sure what colour to dye it, or what would work.

The can't decide on colour sounds silly but I have some curtains that I have bought and haven't quite decided which to use in the bedroom. I bought a number of different curtains with clear ideas of where I would use them but due to a suggestion from my MIL that one of the pairs would look nice in the back bedroom (that I intended to use in the computer room) has meant I am now reassessing what should go where. My MIL does a lot of patchwork and of course was absolutely right about the curtains in the back bedroom. Hence the curtains in the front bedroom could end up being the green ones i originally intended for the front room, some lovely royal blue sanderson swallows ones but i'm not sure if they would be wide enough, or some slate blue william morris strawberry thief ones, pretty but they are thinner and i would need to make some separate linings for them to cut the light out. duvet cover is grey linen bought much reduced in a sale, the colour would probably work with the swallows curtains but would probably need to dye it if I went with the green or william morris curtains.

Laura_Elsewhere

New socks on the horizon… dismantling a pink-purple hood I made (badly) a decade ago and never wore because it went with none of my clothes, and dyeing that black, to then knit up with lots of glowing autumn colours…. all of it Zauberball which makes decent thin warm socks ime To allow for colourwork, I'll bump up from my normal 72 stitches on 2.25mm to quite a bit more... 80-odd, probably... 

Black with those autumn leaf colours will look like the Russian lacquerwork I love so much!

@skogar, I'd be wary of dyeing a vintage wool blanket with lime mortar damage because I suspect the lime may have damaged the fibres - it's harsh stuff, lime mortar (I once burnt my fingerprints off doing a bit of re-pointing and not bothering about gloves...). 

Practice with small stuff With pure  (non-superwash!!!) wool, the main thing is not to agitate hot wool - you can actually heat wool to boiling so long as you don't move it! But if you stir it around AND heat it, it will almost all shrink. Which can be useful - I knit gigantic oversized 13-inch socks, all floppy on 6mm needles in Aran yarn, and then deliberately shrink them to a thick, dense fabric ideal for padding around the flat in cold weather  
But this purple-pink wool below - I half-filled a pyrex dish with white vinegar and a little water (about 1 water to 3 vinegar), and added black food colouring; then I put the wool in, wound loosely, and used two forks to squish it about. I'm squishing and turning it every so often for about an hour - which won't shrink it as it's room-temp. Then I'll ping it in the microwave (check no metallic element to the yarn! If so, use the oven or stovetop with care), just for one minute at a time, every so often over an hour, but without touching it at all. Then I'll let it cool, without touching it, overnight, and tomorrow I'll wash and rinse and rinse it in tepid-cool water. 
So the squishing happens when cold, and the heating part and cooling, happens without any movement of the yarn. 

That will give machine-washable colour-fast dyeing on all pure wool and silk fibres - so long as you wash it properly next day and rinse and rinse and rinse. 

The useful thing is you can repeat it - so if it isn't as dark as you'd like, jsut repeat it! 

catherinekate

It's hard work keeping up with this thread! (But fun!)

Laura_Elsewhere I love your walking skirt. I must admit that unless it's very cold I tend to walk in a shorter skirt and thick nylon tights, but I'm not sure I could manage with all that fabric when we inevitably get lost and have to climb various fences.

Pipney_Jane I've finished Lime Street at Two. There's an interesting part where a man returns from the army in 1944 wearing clothes untouched since the beginning of the war and they all realise how shabby they have become. Very thought provoking reading.

I successfully patched a pair of jeans that had worn through at the knee. The patch is obvious in a way that looks deliberate (I think) and I only sewed the leg together twice. This is the first successful use of my sewing machine! It took me about a week of spare time to do. Onwards and upwards.

thriftwizard

OK, I've forgotten - how many coupons do I need to hand over for 2 x pairs of leggings, and 2 x roll-neck tops, to be worn as kind-of vests? I've just "killed" my last intact pair of leggings whilst constructing shelves for my new greenhouse; I'll be able to darn them & use them for pottering, but certainly couldn't wear them outside the home any longer! And I was down to just a couple of roll-neck tops, which make wearing wool jumpers possible for me, so needed a couple more. I scoured our local charity shops, but wasn't able to find any roll or polo-necks at all, never mind anything in acceptable colours! 

skogar

That wool looks great laura - love the colours.

Many thanks for the dyeing advice, that makes sense. You are correct about lime mortar being vicious - its a strong base (alkali) and can give nasty burns and I'm sure that you are correct that it could damage the wool's surface and alter how the dye would take or even change the colour. I suspect it would be OK as it is only right at the edge of the fold that has been in contact and to be honest even if it didn't work properly on the very small bits that have been in contact its unlikely that anyone would notice as the bits are so small and they shouldn't have been in my bedroom in the first place. It also makes sense to have a practice on some small things first.

When you dye larger things made of wool where do you do it. I'm also rather nervous of dyeing the bath or bathroom interesting colours. I wondered about whether using a plastic dustbin or something like that might work.

skogar

Currently I am having a sort out of the clothes drawers. I have a tendency to wear things until they drop to bits or until I realise that the material has got so thin that they are not really worth fixing and are only fit for the rag bag. Also I tend to forget about things I have and so they don't get worn so the aim is to ragbag a few things that are now beyond sensible repair and if I organise the drawers i am hoping that I will find enough things I haven't worn for ages that I won't need to buy any new things. I have 2 lovely thin knitted tops - one in a lovely autumnal brown and another that is a lovely blue colour - they must be in there somewhere and probably a few other things too. I know I have a few pairs of trousers that need turning up in there so if I do that then i think I will be covered, anything to avoid going shopping for clothes. I hate clothes shopping with a passion. Will see how I get on....