Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Dyeing Again

The past few days I've been discharging, overdyeing and doing 3 layer parfaits. 
I started with previously dyed fabrics for discharging.  I started with decolorant and stenciled a few fabrics.  After they dried I steamed the fabric to activate the decolorant.  I was not very satisfied with the results. 

I had expected a much clearer design result.  It could have been that I didn't use enough, but felt if I used more, it would have leaked under the stencil and given a blurred image.  I'll have to try again using a different approach. 

I went back to my usual discharging of using soft scrub wigth stencils, thermofax screens and circles with a bleach pen.  The soft scrub reacts fast, then rinse and soak in anti-chlor to stop the bleach reaction.  I never know what the discharge coloring will be, but thats part of the excitement. 
My plan after discharging was to overdye the fabrics with thickened dyes and the same stencils.  I mixed the thickener with diluted dyes for the colors I wanted.  Some were dark enough to work, others weren't and didn't show up.  Lesson 1 - learned that I should have used straight dye solution with the thickener to make it more concentrated.
Below are ones that did turn out good.  A couple I overdyed several times with different colors.



I also fold dyed fabric using different folding methods , then dipped the edges into the dyes.  Lesson 2- don't squeeze out excess dye.  this spreads the dye too much and end up with mushy designs.




Towards the end I didn't squeeze the fabric and got clearer results. 

The last day I used up extra dye and made a couple sets of 3 layer parfaits.  On the right I started with first layer of orange/brown mix, layer 2-dark red, layer 3- brown.  Each layer absorbed some of the next color layer and worked out good.   On the lef,t I started with green, layer 2-navy, and layer 3-purple.  The colors were too closely related and color mixes didn't come out as clearly.



The next ones I used half yard pieces instead of fat quarters.  Left side I started with yellow/green, layer 2- dark green, and layer 3-brown.  the colors flowed nicely through all layers.  The right side layer 1-red/violet, layer 2-purple, and layer 3-gray.  These 3 fabrics basically kept that layers color.


I was happy with most of my work and fabrics that didn't turn out I decided to paint instead.  It was a productive few days and am now waiting for some sunny days with little humidity to try flour paste resist.