Suit of a different colour

So - I am gearing up to finalising the pattern for my Tennant Suit’s jacket, and yet again I am in the annoying position where I have the perfect material to use, but only a very limited supply with no chance of replenishment!
Urrgghhhhh!


Some readers may remember the mad scrabble for the JoAnn Brown Pinstripe Fabric a couple of years back, when it was discovered after it had been discontinued and only short end rolls remained in a handful of stores scattered across the US.

This time I have a few metres of the Blue Pinstripe Fabric, which I am still 99.99% sure is the material used to make he original suits.

But although I have cut a very respectable pattern for my jacket (see above), I want to produce a dry run on similar fabric before cutting a single inch of my precious blue material.

A recent thread on the forums entitled “Which is better? Brown suit or Blue????” got people talking about which suit they preferred: the brown or the blue.
One poster, jjlehay, bucked the trend by letting his mind wander onto what other suits The Doctor may have worn if he had remained for further seasons.

He created a plum, moss green and petrol blue versions (see above), but the one I was taken with the most was a deep red, near burgundy colour (see below).

This got me thinking, as when I was at the fabric shop where I found the blue fabric, I had noticed ample amounts alternative colourways, notably a bright green and a bright red (see right).

Following the sucess I had dyeing the blue fabric, my idea would be to go back and buy some of the red, then dye it down to a suitable colour I liked. I could then make the jacket (and maybe the full suit) using it before commencing the blue version.

This way I would get a true feeling of how the fabric would handle, how the interfacing of the entire suit would work (and test the stiffness I would use) as well as technique and fit of the overall pattern.

So, to dye my fabric I have chosen a Violet colour (see below, centre), which I am hoping will impact wit the red and make a much darker colour.

As usual I need to use 500g of salt with the dye and put it through a washing machine on a 40 degree cycle.

I’m quite pleased with the finished result, as it has achieved a very rich deep burgundy colour, just like in the pictures.

I will start cutting the jacket from this very soon. . .

With thanks to Jason Lythgoe-Hay (jjlehay) for giving me the inspiration to make the burgundy suit, and for his permission to reproduce his retouched images here.