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!
What fun samples! Isn’t that the best thing about dyeing and painting with fabric? You can’t ever predict the results!
That was fun! I wouldn’t have thought of using a foam stamp, but your batik sample was great with that! And now I’m thinking maybe my attempt to discharge was a particular fabric and not just me 😉 I feel better already. Thanks Judy!!
So, Judy, did you not like the discharge paste from Dharma? If so, why not… and did the Bleach Stop work well, and was it easy to use? I’ve been thinking about trying discharging, and need to buy my supplies. So any helpful tips you can offer would be most helpful. Thanks for offering your expertise and showing us your experiments!
Susan, the discharge paste works well. I’m a bit impatient to see results, so waiting for it to dry was trying for me. With the bleach, I could see the colors changing, so I could watch how far it went. But you have to work fast to catch it. With the discharge paste it’s a total surprise when it’s done as you don’t see any change on the fabric while it’s drying.
And by the time the first piece with discharge paste had dried, I had done several others with the bleach pen. Also, the fumes from steam ironing the paste off are a caution.
The Bleach Stop did exactly what it was supposed to do, quickly and easily. I’ve got the supplies here if you want to have a play day, just give me a shout. I’ve barely tapped into the discharge paste bottle at all, it goes a long way.
I wanna play…I wanna play.
Love the batik pieces a lot. Interesting about the 2 commercial fabrics and what a nice surprise with the Thimbleberries. Like disharging especially the surprise with the colour that is revealed but have never use discharge paste, only bleach amd the pens.