Smoke and Mirrors.
Forced perspective, dry ice, the 'Kabuki' drop to name a few...
and tea-dipping.
White is often problematic on stage, whether it's theatre, television or film.
Under the lights it can flare, create 'hot-spots' and in a period piece; just look wrong. If you're doing something that has lots of caps, bonnets, cravats and petticoats, bleached whites not only look anachronistically modern, but often draw focus and appear harsh, especially against skin. Even "TV -white" scenic paint is a mid-grey, but looks white on camera.
During technical rehearsals the world over a legion of wardrobe supervisors frantically scribble notes like "Knock back Petruchio's shirt" or some such..& wardrobe departments' laundries get filled with buckets of cold tea with endless whites soaking in them.
And so it is with this ball of ggh Scarlett cotton.

It's a very soft-textured cotton in almost the right weight for the Top Down Bonnet. In fact it was the closest gauge-wise I could get at Champion Textiles. ( I really want to support small business and local business so I resisted going into Tapestry Craft...especially for only 1 ball!).
Except the colour...
Gleaming, flaring, napisan-fresh, ice-ice-baby icy-white.
Hmmm..
Time to delve into the old bag o' tricks and tea-dip.
I haven't done this for a longass time. Not since I gave up doing costumes(I decided I needed a psychology degree as well to keep working with actors) and concentrated on sets.
So, the tea-dipping; It's vey straightforward and is, as the name suggests, simply dipping the prepared item in a cold solution of very weak black tea (finely strained of course). I documented so if anyone's remotely interested I'll do a tutorial in upcoming posts.
You end up with a lovely soft 'antique ivory' hue. It's drying as I type,so hopefully post with the finished colour tomorrow. I impatiently tried to hasten the drying process by putting it in the tumble dryer, then thought to look at the label (der!) which yields nothing more than:
Beanstandungen werden nur bearbeitet wenn alle Einstecker vorliegen.
I'm a quarter german myself but I really only know how to say "see you later", "that's a nice pen" and "Fabulous!" in deutsch, so babelfish translated it for me into:
" objections only worked on if all in plugs to be present".
Right well, I had better work out what my plugs are.
...But maybe the triangle with the cross though it means no tumble drying...(I could never work out those graphic fabric-care symbols).
Sure enough the yarn had just started to unwind itself, nevermind I'm sure I can twist it back while I'm ball-winding (she thought hopefully to herself).