New Teens Dress

I love clothes from the late teens era, that time during WW1 but nearing the end .  Not sure why.  I like the hats one wears, the shoes and the dresses.  Some of my favorite outfits to both make and wear have been late teens

So summer whites picnic came up and I was tired of making and wearing 40s dresses so decided to give a new teens pattern a try.  These patterns can be challenging as there are little to no instructions included.   In this case, the challenge was merely time and color.  I was unexpectedly required to go out of town for family reasons so I really had less than a week from the time I crazily decided to make a new dress to pull it off - a dress I was going to tea dye.

Front
There is also a sash which
is missing from this photo

Back

White looks bad on me.  Cream does not.  For the past couple of years I have been a good girl and mostly followed the rules of this outing by wearing white or white with black polka dots.  This year I said no to white and yes to cream.  The problem was my fabric was white.

What to do??  Dye it  with tea of course!  Not that I have ever successfully dyed anything before this.

I had waaaayyy to much fabric to dye the fabric first and wasn't sure I wanted to dye all 5 yards so I made the dress first and figured if I ran out of time I would at least have a white dress that made me look like death warmed over.

Due to the lack of time, I went for it.  It was a 38 bust pattern which I knew would be big but whatever...no time to worry.  The top is oddly patterned and I am not sure why.  The back and front is in one piece with an insert of sorts.  Weird and a little difficult to sew.

I added some tucks of course.  Love tucks and so correct for this time period.

My trip out of town was on a 6 am flight Thursday morning.  I finished the dress Wednesday night and tea dyed it at midnight Wednesday night/ Thursday morning.

Difference between original white fabric and tea dyed fabric ...... a nice cream color.

My tea dye recipe was 4 chamomile tea bags with one english breakfast bag.  I had read that black tea left an orangish hue and chamomile resulted in a  more yellow hue.  I knew I wanted some warmth from orange but not a lot.  I also left it in the bath for not more than 1/2 hour.    I really was making this up as I went.

By 2 am it was out of the dryer (the neighbors must love me!) and I had to pack for my flight.

I added the trim Saturday night upon my return.

There are no pictures of me wearing the dress as I was so sick whilst at the picnic that I wanted to crawl under our silly "period correct" table and die.

Though I do rather love the dress and cannot wait to find another reason to wear it!