Hi,
My little, very new SCA group will be having it’s first tourney this saturday. I am teaching 3 of the the younger feamale members how to sew and we have been working dilligently on t tunics. They werer not happy witht he plain white fabric thier mothers gave them so asked to dye the cloth. We were going for maroon and ended up with bright pink! Could we get away with the pink? aparently we have some authenticity mavins coming along and I don’t want the girls to be picked on.
Im giving the cloths a wash in nappy stuff to try and tone down the brightness - I’m hoping a paler pink would pass better
People will tell you pink isn’t period, and to some extent they’re right - a modern bright clear pink isn’t much like a madder pink.
But frankly, if you have a brand new group and you’re sewing t-tunics and some bitch has the nerve to say something about it? Not that it doesn’t happen, but it didn’t happen in my nice friendly barony.
I have no idea what “nappy stuff” is, but I’ve had plenty of success in toning down colors with a tea dye.
“Nappy stuff” would be what 'murrkins refer to as (something like) diaper soak - it’s what you soak cloth diapers in before washing them.
it’s called the “Society for Creative Anacronism” for a reason. Be Creative!
Having looked up what diaper soak is, I don’t think it’ll be much help with the pinkness. At best, it might be paler, but still the wrong sort of pink.
Trust me on the tea…I’ve turned a handful of noxious things into approvable garb with the help of a handful of Lipton or PG Tips teabags.
Let me second the tea. Cheap and easy. Use really hot water and let it set, remembering that it will wash out to a lighter tone. You probably won’t have pink anymore at all, but what you will have will pass. We had those “Mavens” too. They spent one whole meeting deciding if my BIL’s character would be able to afford the maroon fabric we used as INSETS into his shirt sleeves! (It actually boiled down to “being a single man, he might have been able to afford it”)
When I was in, I was a crazy-ass authenticity nut… for MYSELF. Or if somebody asked my opinion on the subject, as in the actual question “do you think this pink is period?” If the question is, “Does this look okay” and it’s a t-tunic made out of a bedsheet, there is no conceivable answer but “You look wonderful!” I’ve heard horror stories, though. (Not in Meridies, mind you, where I used to be. But other places.)