Decolorant Experiments

I decided to try decolorant ( a type of discharge paste) again.  I used it during the summer but with little success.  Can't just discard it with only one try, so I pulled out dark hand-dyed fabrics and some stencils and tried again.

These worked very well.  The fabric didn't discharge to white, but that wasn't whaat I wanted anyway.

The discharge was to a much lighter tint of the original fabric, on the red/violet, brown, blue/violet and medium green, the olive green discharged to a golden brown, interesting.  The red, orange, and fushia to a creamy color.  I could have kept ironing the paste fabric but I found that the paste spread out and haloed after about 90 seconds.

The next set didn't come out as clearly, all but the yellow probably could have been ironed longer, the yellow just wasn't dark enough.

I'm not sure what more I'll do to them, probably some paint sketching or threadwork on the discharge areas. 

I also tried decolorant plus.  This is discharge with paint added to it.  Needless to say, it comes in quite a few colors.  I started off trying a three pack of orange, lime green, and purple.  Then while I was at Quiltfest of NJ last week I bought 2 more 3 packs - persimmon, brown and autumn yellow and orange ice, robins egg blue and carnation.  I would have liked to get the primaries - red, yellow, and blue, but they were out - another time. 

Mostly they came out well.  I used stencils again.  It takes the color out and leaves the paint on top.  I do have to watch out what colors I use on the fabric so that there is a good contrast, otherwise it doesn't show up very well.

These are some that didn't work out so well, my color choices on the red fabric weren't all clear, I shouldn't have used orange and brown, they just don't show up very well.  The yellow fabric with sunflowers just look like I painted them.  The bottom fabric is a commercial batik that I used the white decolorant on, I'm undecided on how that turned out.

All in all I'm happy with the outcome.  Now I have to think about how to use the blocks in a quilt or quilts.  Ideas are starting to formulate in my mind.

Batty about Batiks

Tuesday I batiked fabric again. It was such fun before, I had to do more.

This time I started with previous hand-dyed fabric as my first layer. I started with smaller designs first using soy wax and a tjanting tool. Overdyed the fabric with a darker color and let dry in the sun. I did some of the fabrics with a second layer of soy wax and larger designs and overdyed the fabric with a second darker dye.

These were done with one layer of soy wax.

And these were done with several layers of soy wax and dyes.

I feel I had more success this time around with the batiking. I learned to start off waxing with smaller designs first and with each layer of wax making the designs larger, also starting off with lighter dye colors and progressing darker.

Summer is more than half over and sooo many more surface design techniques to try!!!

We're in the middle of a heat wave now so I'll go back in the air-conditioning and continue with a work in progress.