The Magician's Lining

Hello, fellow Whovians! 

Last week I wrote about the fabrics used for the 12 Doctor’s coat, tried to find the best alternative, as well as gave a little insight into the progress of my costume. As I promised, today’s post is about the lining! 

Most people believe that the lining is a plain red. In actual fact, the lining is a quite unique weave of two colours - red and blue! If you look closely in the photos of Capaldi in his costume, you can see the pattern woven in. 

The costume was revealed in January, and the costume itself would have been made slightly earlier. Because of this, much like the coat fabric, the lining is out of stock. Back in June, after many hours of walking up and down 29 fabric shops (yes, I counted), I managed to find 2 shops that used to sell the fabric. According to the one of the shops, the fabric was woven in Italy, then sold to John Lewis for a while, until the remaining stock was bought up by the first shop. I have not tried to contact John Lewis, so cannot validate this, but it’s an interesting idea anyway. I bugged the sellers about samples, but they had nothing left of the fabric. 

The second shop also could not provide me with any samples, although I did have an interesting chat with the sellers about the Doctor Who fabrics, and was told that designers Louise Page and Howard Burden were regular customers, and would often buy things from them. When I asked exactly what they had bought, the sellers shrugged their shoulders, and said “way to many things! We can’t remember!”. So with this information I left.

Recently, I found the time to visit those same shops, but this time to try and find the fabrics from the 12 Doctor’s new tartan trousers, but more on that later :) While looking through the fabrics in the other shop, where the lining fabric was sold, I saw something familiar in the distance. I walked up closer to check… “No!” - I thought to myself. “Can it be?!!”…

… And, surely, I was not blind! In front of my eyes where two variations of the lining! In a purple and green colour variant! 

I ran back to get the seller, and asked him whether this was the lining. He confirmed it, saying that they were all made at the same time. I instantly bought as much as I could. As I, honestly, wasn’t expecting to find anything, I had a small amount of money with me, so I used that to buy 1 metre of each colour. 

After stroking the fabrics for 5 hours, I then moved on to contemplating whether it were possible to dye these fabrics. I had a pack of yellow dye lying around, so I decided to try it. And it worked perfectly!

As this test worked perfectly, I then proceeded to buy red dye. And, well… It turned pink -

 I then ran back to the shops to get a darker shade of red. And… That didn’t work well either -  

After this, I had lost all hope of dying the fabrics. Until a friend suggested trying a mix of a few colours. I adjusted the formula for this, and after I did a test swatch, and after being happy with the result, dyed the rest of the fabric. And it came out like this - 

Perfect! Red and blue, just like the original!

As I only had a couple metres, I instantly rushed back to the shop to buy the remaining stock.

As you can see, comparing it with the photo, it matches up quite well!

As I have a fair bit of the fabric now, so if you would like a couple metres, or a commemorative swatch to stroke for 5 hours (it’s such a lovely fabric!), then please do get in touch, and I’ll do my best to help! 

‘Till the next time :)