Wednesday, August 19, 2009

discharging fabrics

There are several ways of discharging fabrics. This weekend I used both bleach and discharge paste. The fabric you see here:
started out as a handdyed piece of fabric. It came from my stash so I have no idea which colors I had used for it. I knotted the fabric and poured plain kitchen cleaning bleach over it, let it soak a bit and when I saw the fabric change color I rinsed it in water. Removed the knots so that the water could get everywhere. After this rinsing I rinsed a second time in water mixed with antichlor to stop the bleach activity.
Also I worked with some black Kona fabric. The first bleaching had been done last year when I had covered the fabric partly with cheesecloth before I sprayed bleach over it. I did several pieces like that and decided to continue working with one of them. Through Google I had found a quote by Dom Helder Camara which I liked. I enlarged this to the size I needed and cut out all the words of freezer paper. These templates I ironed onto the fabric. Next step was to apply discharge paste with a brush to the cut outs. Let this dry. Final step was to remove the templates and iron the fabric. The discharge paste becomes active when you heat it and the fabric where it had been applied to turns into a creamy yellow/white. Using these 2 combinations of discharge I got a result with which I am very happy.

3 comments:

Dahn said...

These pieces are very exciting and very interesting. Nice technique there Wil!

Dahn

hannie said...

Ik kan me voorstellen,dat je heel blij bent met dit resultaat. Ze zijn allebei heel mooi geworden. Heb je de letters uit het freezer paper gesneden,en daarna het vel opgestreken?

Wow Gold said...

Very Nice Blog.