July 2004

Introduction and sources

Hard as it is to believe though it is at the moment, with the summer sun radiating down and the sunburnt skin peeling from my back, Kentwell can get remarkably cold. So a jacket is an immensely useful thing to have. I made one last year, but it was all a bit of a disaster, and it's since been dismantled. So this is jacket mark II.

I'm planning on making something rather like the red jacket shown in this snipped from Breughel's The Hay Harvest. It's a snuggly fitted jacket that flares over the hips. However, past experience tells me that it's not as easy to get it to fit nicely over the hips as you might expect. So, if worst comes to worst, I'll cut the bottom bit off and end up with a short jacket like the one shown to the right. It's always good to have a back up plan.

Dying the fabric

This is my fabric. It's a pure wool. In real life it's not quite so bright as that (my camera has a hard time coping with reds) and is, in fact, a wonderful madder red that we've got a thousand times on the manor. If you're near enough, it's from the Colchester Remnant Shop at around the seven pound a metre mark, and I highly recommend it.

Fab as the colour is, it's a bit redder than I have in mind. Ideally, I'd like to darken it and make it a bit more brown. Now, in my experience, dylon on wool is a complete waste of time. Walnut would do the job, but would involve more time and effort than I'm willing to give to this project. So it's time to improvise.

My one and only decaff drinking friend has recently moved to the US. She's also stopped avoiding caffeine, and now extolls the virtues of huge black coffees with added expresso. I refuse to speculate on whether these two facts are related. Either way, I have about a third of a jar of instant decaff lurking in the back of my cupboard. It's of no use to me: I'm a tea drinker. So it's destined to become dye.

This is the dyebath. Starbucks eat your heart out. I've made up the coffee with boiling water, then mixed in cold water to make it up to volume. The vat itself is a second hand army cooking cauldron, designed for dishing up vast piles of stodge to hungry squaddies. It's huge, which makes it ideal for my purposes. I've dunked the fabric, given it a good stir round, and will leave it for a few hours.

A few hours later...

I've hooked the wool out of the dyebath and hung it on the line. It's hard to tell what colour it'll end up because it's wet but, so far, it looks as if all I've achieved is to make my yard smell of coffee. Nice, but not exactly the desired result. Back to the drawing board.

On to sewing the prototype.