After I finished the quilt that was on the machine this morning; which turned out great but I forgot to take pictures before returning it; I loaded the MQR Tryptichs and did the quilting on them. They look great, but my neck is a little stiff and this is why:
So, to end the evening, instead of loading another quilt and leaning over the machine. Or sitting at the Bernina and leaning forward to see, I decided to do some fabric discharging. I’ve played with this once before and I wasn’t keen on my results. So I wanted to work with it again, and try a few things differently.
This piece of fabric is a quilting cotton, originally grey with black flowers on it. The two pieces on the left are with a bleach pen, the piece on the right is with Discharge Paste from Dharma.
The next piece is a leftover batik from my brother’s quilt I made this year. I used the bleach pen, with a foam stamp in a leaf shape. I treated the fabric with BleachStop after I was done. I like this one:
The next photo is the same process, but this time on a coarser fabric. I’m not sure of the name of this fabric, it feels almost as coarse as a homespun, but it’s got the dyeing of a batik:
So far I’m liking everything except the first piece! So I wondered what would happen with the foam stamp, the bleach pen and a quilting cotton. I pulled a Thimbleberries green FQ from the shelf and started stamping. WOW, what a surprise, now I know color theory, but I still wasn’t expecting this, nor the brilliance underneath:
I was on a roll, I was enjoying this. And then I hit THIS fabric. This is after the THIRD TIME attempting to discharge it. I have used the bleach pen direct. I used the bleach pen with the foam stamp, and then I used the discharge paste both with the foam stamp and with a foam brush! And what did I get? NOTHING!!!!!!!!! Almost no change at all, except the tiniest hint that maybe after a year or more of processing it might think about changing:
I think it’s time to quit for the night. Clean up the mess I made. Put the brown and red discharges with some fabrics I’ve been storing to do “something” with. I’m getting closer to using them. And then I think I’ll call it both a night and a productive day!