However, while the stripe spacing was a welcome improvement, the colors of the updated fabric are now too light in comparison to the original GAP fabric. The older colors were actually a bit closer, although it was a bit too dark.
Here's a three-way comparison (in various lighting scenarios) between Magnoli's older brown fabric (top), the newer brown fabric (bottom), and a swatch of original GAP trousers fabric in the middle, in various lighting situations.
While it's easy to observe the improved stripe spacing, here's a color comparison between just the updated replica and original GAP fabrics:
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| Outdoors, sunlight |
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| Outdoors, shade |
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| Indoors, with flash |
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| Indoors, no flash |
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It's still decent replica fabric (and the best option I know of currently on the market), but as you can see, the color fidelity leaves something to be desired ...
That said, if it were too dark, we'd be screwed, but fortunately (in our case), the fabric is too light, meaning that it can be dyed darker, and closer to the original GAP colors!
So I decided to go to work, launching another series of dye experiments in an attempt to shift the updated Magnoli fabric closer to the GAP colors. It might not look it, but it's really almost there, already; it only needs a little nudge!
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NOTE: The fabric-dyeing techniques I use, I learned from my friend Michael Cowart, whose experience in this field far outweighs my own, and from a fantastic book entitled Synthetic Dyes for Natural Fibers by Linda Knutson, which he recommended to me and I now recommend to you, if you're interested in "properly" dyeing fabric!
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Being 100% cotton, the Magnoli fabric requires fiber-reactive dye, and my first strategy was to hit it with a "primary" (single-pigment) dye, both for the sake of simplicity and maximum amount of control over the end result.
I started with
Dharma Trading Company's PR23 "Cerulean," doing three initial tests to get an idea of how much blue might be required to darken the fabric. Obviously, not much!
(The following photos were all photographed outdoors on a sunny day, unless otherwise noted.)
Clearly, the cerulean darkened the brown base just like I was hoping it would, but I wasn't going to achieve a good match using only blue, so I decided to hit it with a little bit of red to see what would happen - Dharma's PR13 "Fuchsia Red" (again, a "primary"/single-pigment dye).
Obviously, even a very small amount was overkill!
Well, unfortunately neither blue or red would get me there on their own, but both rounds of initial tests had provided me with valuable information; it seemed a combination of the two colors might yield some better results, so I performed a brief series of tests, experimenting with the proportions.
As you can see, now I was starting to really get somewhere!
But unfortunately, even a combination of blue and red didn't seem enough to really bring the Magnoli fabric as close to the original GAP colors as I'd have liked; I'd have to bust out the big guns with a triple-color custom mix by adding a little yellow - Dharma's PR1 "Lemon Yellow" (again, a "primary"/single-pigment dye).
Believing the latter experiment to be the closest, I scaled back the red a bit and injected a bit of yellow instead.
Already, things were looking better! But it needed a bit more ...
... and a bit more ...
I liked this particular formula, but as you can see, as I "diluted" the blue with red and especially yellow, the results grew less and less dark.
Even bumping the depth-of-shade up to 0.3% was a noticeable improvement.
Now here's where things started to get a bit more nebulous and problematic.
The original GAP trousers fabric is obviously brown and blue, but more specifically, the brown is kind of a greenish brown, and the blue pinstripes have just a tinge of lavender to them.
At this point in my dye experiments, I felt the brown base needed a bit more yellow to produce that greenish (GAP) brown, so I injected a bit more yellow into the mix.
As you can see, adding more yellow to the mix resulted in a damn good color-match between the browns, but it had the "side effect" of turning the blue pinstripes too green!
So, I scaled the yellow back a bit and increased the red in an attempt to give those pinstripes that lavender tinge I mentioned before.
Obviously, that was overkill, but I hadn't much wiggle room in any direction before I was back to where I'd left off before, so I tried again at a higher depth-of-shade.
I was pretty sure I had a winner, but I did one more test at a slightly higher depth-of-shade, just to be sure.
Yep, too much.
So, backing up to the penultimate test, I'm comfortable calling it a winner!
It's not perfect, but it's really, really close to the original GAP trousers' colors.
The brown base should be a bit greener (re: more yellow), but as you saw above, hitting it with more yellow turned the pinstripes too green.
On the other hand, the stripes should have a slightly more of a lavender "tinge" to them (re: more red), but hitting it with more red steered that brown base away from the greenish zone.
I believe this formula to be the best compromise between the two colors, and the closest balanced match of both. (In other words, we could achieve one color or the other, but not both; this way, both may not be quite perfect, but they're as close as I can manage without knocking the other too far off course.)
That said, it's really, really close. And I do mean close.
Here are a couple indoor color comparisons, with flash.
And here are a couple direct comparisons between my dyed fabric and the original GAP swatch:
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| Outdoors, no flash |
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| Indoors, with flash |
Frankly, in normal interior lighting, the two are almost indistinguishable!
So that's the dye formula I recommend!
All of those dyes, as well as other necessary supplies (synthrapol and soda ash fixative) can be ordered on Dharma's web site:
I hope you found this helpful, and if you give it a shot, I'd love to hear about it!
Between this and my previous blog post about
matching the GAP trousers waistband fabric, you should be all set for a kickass replica suit!
Stay tuned here on the blog (or, better yet, subscribe to my "Costume Guide" e-mail newsletter) for more regarding 10th Doctor suit projects, as well as upcoming 11th Doctor waistcoat patterns and sewing tutorials!
