For William Peace University’s production of Jane Eyre, we needed a wedding dress. I had to build a vast number of pieces for this show (all of the women’s brown dresses, Bertha’s costume, etc), so building another gown was simply out of the question. While going through stock, I found an old silk dress that had potential. The poor thing was in terrible shape – the skirt had some massive water stains on it, and there was some horrible staining under the armpits. Further, it was an odd sort of design – it had a beautiful full skirt, but the bodice went straight up to the neck with a peter-pan style collar. Weird. I needed a dress, though. So… let’s make it work.
First – the color was wrong. I couldn’t picture Jane Eyre wearing bright silver silk duiponi. I chopped off the peter-pan collar and used those pieces to test-dye the silk. I dipped it into red, which produced a lovely burgundy – and tan, which produced a wonderful silvery copper. I settled on the copper, since that fit our color palette a little better. Into the dye vat went the dress. And when it came out…. it was definitely NOT copper. Instead, it was an amazing silvery/grey/sage green that I couldn’t have made if I had TRIED. The dye process masked the staining on the skirt and underarms, to boot. One problem down… one to go!
The style of the bodice was all wrong for the 1840′s. I dropped the neckline down to a shallow V, and dyed some net lace beige to coordinate with the sage green of the gown. The lace got tacked into the neckline, mimicking an 1840′s Bertha. In the end, the gown looked gorgeous on stage – and is truly a testament to what you can do with something that is seemingly ruined.