A good day to dye

Yesterday it finally cooled down enough for me to take on a little project I've been percolating on: I dyed everything I own brown.

Well, not everything. But several key items. The most key of which being a bolt of cloth I bought last spring with the idea that I would sew it up into some sweet summer outfits. Now that summer's more than halfway over (because nevermind the calendar – to me, summer is June, July and August, and that's final) I figured I'd better get on with it or reconsider my entire plan. So I got on with it.

Everything turned out well, even though I'm not totally happy with the color I got on a couple of items. I used plain old Rit dye – the only kind you can buy in this town, now that our tiny little fabric store has been shut down by the new Whole Foods moving in next door (more about this later) – in dark brown. The first things you throw into the pot come out nice and dark, but once the dark cocoa-y pigments have been absorbed, anything else you put in comes out a pretty pinkish-brown, which can be good if you know what to expect and plan ahead.

I'm collecting fallen walnuts from our tree in preparation for a "natural brown dye" experiment to be conducted sometime in the fall. Walnut hulls yield a beautiful and very strong dark brown pigment that can be used to make excellent ink or to color fabrics, wood, paper, cement – basically, anything that will absorb the dye, including the skin of both hands, which will remain deeply stained – almost black – for up to two weeks after handling the hulls (fingernails hold the color considerably longer than that). I learned this from personal experience a few years ago and am looking forward to making some practical use of the information this year.

So anyway, last night was the dying party, and tonight I'm breaking out the scissors and thread. I'm hoping to end up with a new version of my standard homemade summer dress; I want to change the neckline around a little bit and do something different at the hem. I've been wearing my hair up in this funny old-fashioned double-bun kind of arrangement on both sides of the top of my head, and I think a funky homemade brown flowered dress will be just the thing to wear with it.

Now all I need is some clumpy old brown men's oxfords and a flowered cotton apron, and my transformation into Depression-era farm wife will be complete.