Illumination! Colored Discharge Printing with vat dyes and Formosul

The nice weather has allowed some outside discharge work. I pulled some existing fabrics out of the van to work with; I think they have been improved. All three pieces utilized screens made with house paint.
First is a piece of muslin that was dyed with turquoise, fuchsia and I think, navy, then stenciled with fabric paints. I used a screen painted on the lightest weight (25 gm) Lutradur. The design is inspired by “Big Iris, by Philip Taaffe, 1985”. If you look at the picture enlarged, you’ll see the random non-woven fibrous structure of the Lutradur.
Second is a piece of snow- dyed fabric that I printed with a screen created with bubble wrap.  Easier and more predictable than printing with the wrap itself, as well as tidier.
Third is a piece of Radiance cotton-silk sateen, dyed blue with acid dyes. The first picture shows a major learning experience. Just above and to the left of center is a dark slit that shows how silk isn’t happy with prolonged periods of high pH and high temperature, especially when followed by a normal cycle machine wash. When I do this again with silk, I will only process the fabric one time!! This one had two cycles through the pressure cooker. The last picture shows a larger view of the fabric. The blue-violet areas were screened while the black circles were directly applied. Because of the density of the circles, you can see the halo really well.
The directions from Pro Chemical that I followed are found here. They advise that it is an intermediate to advanced technique. For a simpler approximation, try deColourant. I cleaned a screen with water squeegeed through onto a floor mop-up towel. It discharged by just hanging in the sun, the way deColourant does.
As always, thanks for looking. These fabrics will be on the website soon!

Quick picture of discharged shibori

This is a piece of Testfabrics black broadcloth that I discharged with Thiox and over-dyed with MX. It was folded in half and wrapped around a pipe, then bound with thread. I’d love to do this again with a really sheer fabric.

More Discharge

Here are a few more discharged fabrics that I have produced lately. I think they look different than the other ones I’ve posted recently. The first one is a 44” square of broadcloth dyed a fairly dark blue-green. It was then accordion-folded in two directions and clamped between 4 CDs. Then it was discharged in Thiox and overdyed with yellow and red.

The second piece started out as a  grey-green color. Then it was bound in the ‘onion bag on steroids’ and discharged, then overdyed with brown. The patterning from the netting isn’t as strong as some other, but it  does evoke stone very will.

The last piece is a square of sateen that was also dyed a dark blue-green. It was folded in an arc shape from one corner, clamped and discharged. No overdye on this one – it works as it stands. Thanks for looking!

Can’t let this one go

Well, spent a lot of time yesterday doing discharge. That’s in the washer right now, but I wanted to post a picture of this fabric. It turned out really neat, and I’d like to do more with it. I could make a whole-cloth wall hanging out of it and it would be just cloth and stitching. Or I could add more layers of complexity in surface design, or add appliqué  - circles, probably. But I did hang it and placed some circles that are already made on it, and didn't like it. So I’m posting this here, and sending a message to the Quilting Art and ComplexCloth folks. FYI – this started out as a dark purple mixed from Turquoise & Fuchsia, and was discharged in bleach (I'm pretty sure.)

More discharge – on bamboo rayon

These fabrics came out a lot nicer than the Kona. Part of that is because the fabric is thinner, and part is because I like the more organic nature of the patterning on at least two of them. The third, while more geometric, is a whole-cloth piece that hangs together well, IMHO. All three were discharged in Thiox, which leaves a nice pale color behind; the first piece, which measures 28” x 60”, was pole-wrapped and overdyed.

The second was done with what I call 'onion bag on steroids’ followed by purple overdye and the third was folded, discharged and dyed a coral color on two edges; green on the other two. Sorry to sound vain, but I’m pleased with all of these! Thanks for looking.

Discharge on black Kona

Have gotten some more discharge done. Here are some pictures of some ho-hum items, compared with some of the others at least. Each of these were done on Robert Kaufman’s Kona cotton, purchased black. (Click on the link at right to shop DippyDyes.)

Follow-up: a couple people have had questions: these were all dyed in an immersion bath of Clorox diluted with an equal amount of water. The amount of clamping and the amount of fabric exposed to the bleach makes all the difference.

Classes on website

Finally! I have scheduled classes in dyeing, discharge and appliqué and posted them on my website. Appliqué is a monthly evening class held on the second Monday of the month. Well, this isn’t the usual picture of a quilt in progress, but I couldn’t resist. The quilt is done now, and the dog is gone, but he always makes us smile. The blocks are from Jane Townswick’s Artful Appliqué II book, which students can work from if they choose.

The dye class is an introduction for folks who haven’t dyed before and the discharge class won’t teach dyeing, but for people who plan to discharge only commercial fabrics, the dyeing step is not absolutely necessary. They are being held the first and second Saturday of June, and class size is limited to 4 people. Classes will be held outside; in the event of rain we will be in the basement or the garage. Here’s a link for a little more information.

That’s it for now; back to putting products on the website. Thanks for looking!

Lancaster show aftermath

Last weekend was my first big show as a vendor. I thought I'd post a picture of the booth taken before the show opened, and some pictures of discharged pieces that sold.

This is the booth, complete with the 'Casbah' look. The floor is actually the ballroom carpet, but it adds to the look, I think.
The remaining pictures are of fabrics that underwent various resists, then were discharged and overdyed. From top to bottom, they are Kaufman's Radiance,
a Moda batik,
Kaufman's Panda

and Sateen,
and a white broadcloth that was dyed several times before discharging the final dark purple.

The studio is at present a disaster; not wasting any pictures on that! And I have three weeks before the next show to restock. Gonna get DH to do some tyeing and ironing, I think. Thanks for visiting!

Updated the blog

If you've visited before, you might notice a new look. I also added labels to everything, and was a bit surprised to note that the category 'Discharge' had the most entries, by 10 to 4. And I enjoyed looking back at my earlier work. It's supposed to be in the 50s tomorrow, Thursday, so I'm planning to fire up the hot plate outside & do more discharge. Tonight I must get more stitching & tying done in preparation. And it's time to mix up some new dye stocks, or else work on taxes. Hmmm - which will be better? Maybe my reward for getting taxes done will be to start dyeing again. Oh, if I had such self-control!
Time to mess with the black fabric.

Another discharged piece

Hi - not lots of time, just wanted to post this picture. It's black radiance fabric with some shibori binding & capping, discharged in Thiox and overdyed. The cotton side is on the left, silk is on the right. Thanks to Carol Soderlund for getting me to this point!

More discharge samples

We had lovely weather for February here in Pennsylvania - up into the 50s and 60s. So I got outside and did more discharge, including sampling the Robert Kaufman products in bleach. Here's a picture of the two:

The sateen is on the left - it's still very lustrous, the 'Panda' cotton-bamboo blend is on the right. The lines on the Panda are very crisp. No time for more. Hope these pictures inspire! - Lisa

Discharge Samples

Just received fabrics from Robert Kaufman. The photo shows four fabrics, labelled by maker and fabric type. All were tied the same way and were discharged in a hot (but not boiling) Thiox bath for varying amounts of time. The Radiance (cotton-silk blend) is pinned back to show both faces of the fabric. The Panda is a cotton-bamboo blend. I sponge-painted a large piece of it (50+" square) with Thiox in print paste, and washed it out in the sink. It has a lovely softness, and I understand will get softer with more washing.

I have these fabrics on my website in both black and PFD white, except the Blank black, which is available from my local shop, Quilter's Remedy. See the links at right to go to the DippyDyes site or to their site. Robert Kaufman wants purchases of $1500 per year for me to keep getting wholesale prices, so if I can sell some yardage to other dyers, it will help - thanks.

Taking the time to continue discharge studies

Well, one hope I had for Carol's class is that it would help serve as a means to get me re-motivated, energised, etc. It has succeeded in doing that! Yesterday I fired up the hot plate and Thiox and Clorox solutions (outside) and tested a rainbow assortment of fabrics I dyed the day before, plus a commercial batik that had produced good results in class. (That's on the left in the picture.) We tested pure MX dyes in class, so now I'm starting to build a reference of discharged simple mixes. Someday with my free time (!) I'll get through the simple mixes and mess about with three primaries.

Looking at the amount of time involved in one simple page of swatches has made me decide to sign up for Color Mixing for Dyers. There are some spots left in the fall, and I'm calling dibs on one of them! That and a check in the mail might get me somewhere. Now I just need the cost/benefit analysis to persuade DH.

One thing I learned this week is that a warm solution of new chlorine bleach is far, far superior to the old, cold mix I made up. Got around it, but add that to the long, long "learn by doing wrong" list.

Well, it's 11:30 and time to quit for tonight. One more week of the under-paying, gas-drinking job and I'll be focusing on dyeing and quilting! If that's not scary, I don't know what is.

Back to reality

10:30 PM Monday, 5/12/2008
Back to reality again. I have, however, managed to unpack, launder and iron the pieces that came home with me. The final two days were full of work, including cleaning up the studios and packing, as well as the real work for our final project. I did not post anything on this on Thursday night because I was taping my first Thermofax screens with Gorilla brand tape. It’s a really neat technology that may have spoiled me against silk screening.
Here’s a picture of the 12 squares I dyed, two at a time,
using the same recipe from Carol but changing the primaries for each. I used three different yellows, four reds and four blues. I only made twelve samples, which is only a third of the possibilities. One set was saved as a control, and the other set was discharged, using either Thiox in print past, Thiox by immersion, or immersion in chlorine bleach. A couple were left in the discharge solution too long, and one lost the rubber band resist, but they are a good example of the differing results attainable. I did not do any screens with thickened bleach – something to try in the future. To the right is a fabric I machine stitched, discharged and overdyed while the stitching was still in place. This is a picture of the stitched fabric before gathering, discharging and dyeing.
Also still to try: wrapping fabric around a thick piece of rope and tying it tightly, and also illumination – replacing one color with another by discharging the fabric with Thiox containing a color that doesn’t discharge. One fellow student tried this, but was working on top of a color that wouldn’t discharge. However, the replacement color seems to sit on top of the original color without the transparency you’d expect. This is a blue on top of a yellow that did not yield a green. Very interesting, and could be hard to re-create.
Friday night most of our group went out to dinner together to a very nice Italian restaurant (Scali’s) near the hotels. That’s definitely a place to return to! Didn’t return to the room until almost 11, I think, so there was not going to be any posting done then. Got almost completely packed and managed to sleep in, relatively speaking, until 7:30. Then off to the airport to drop off my commute-mate and fellow student in time for her flight to the west coast, and I was on the road home before 10 AM. The return trip was harder, because I was more tired than I was coming out, but I got home in one piece. The greatest pain involved was refueling my truck after 430+ miles, for a mere $101.27! Yikes!!!
Thanks all, for looking. If you were in the class and I have posted any pictures I should not have, please let me know - you have my e-mail from the attendee list.

Day three - final project looms

11:15 PM Wednesday May 7
Will be very brief tonight! We did a display of all our discharged and overdyed fabrics this evening:
Our homework is to start thinking about a final project that will incorporate the various techniques we have learned over the past three days - dyeing, resists and discharge methods - into one piece of cloth or a series of pieces. We will also start building our sample pages with the untouched dye, bleached fabric and thioxed fabric. We touched on illumination - simultaneously discharging one color while applying another. Way cool!
I also got to use my first Thermofax screen, and have two more to tape up. (Gorilla tape is awesome.)
That's it for tonight. I do have a large sketchpad page of ideas for the final project that I hope will be achievable. Looks like the beginning of a series to me.

A second lovely day at the Crow Art Barn

10:30 PM
Another late evening, but well worth it. This will be brief, however, because I have homework to do before bed.
Today we saw some examples of bound, discharged and overdyed fabrics, and proceeded to make our own attempts. By the end of the day we had variously clamped and rubber-banded 18” – 21” squares of black fabrics, soaked them in bleach solution, rinsed and antichlored them. Then they went into the washing machine still clamped. When they came out, two of mine had come apart because I used some old elastic on a spool that didn’t hold up to the wash cycle. They were rebound, and then, after letting them dry a bit, we applied dye followed by soda ash. They are batching overnight, so more in tomorrow’s post.
I also tried discharging a black tee shirt from Michael’s. After a long time in the chlorine bath, it appeared to be just black and charcoal, and wasn’t worth overdyeing. So it went into the washer and dryer with the towels, and here’s how it looked after a good washing out. (Excuse the squint!)
We also discharged the fabric we had put potato dextrin on yesterday. There’s a good view of an assortment of pieces hanging on the line, and also a look down from the deck onto our work area.
We ended the evening with a PowerPoint presentation on what many top artists are doing or have done recently with discharge. Wow! When I don’t have homework to do, I will have to surf to their websites and post a list with links to their sites.
Goodnight for now!

Day 1 of class

Well, I don’t know how people can produce such great blogs. I’m determined to keep up on this, but I’m not sure if it will be interesting! Today was the first day of the 'Dyeing to Discharge' class with Carol Soderlund, and it was quite interesting. Some things we did were driven by the availability of good weather – we’re supposed to have rain later in the week, so we’re taking advantage of the outdoors where possible.
Today we did some very basic dyeing with Procion MX dyes – all single pure colors on cotton and silk, and made pieces big enough so all of us could have a sample of the un-discharged control, and the end result using one or two methods of discharge. We also brought in commercial blacks and batiks on a variety of fibers, and discharged them with the same methods, leaving one piece for a control. Carol gave us great instructions for small scale immersion dyeing and discharging using both Thiox and bleach.

Our last task was to make up batches of potato dextrin resist. Then, while it cooled, we went upstairs for another wonderful dinner by Margaret Wolf. I have refrained from licking the plates, but it’s a tough struggle. After dinner and conversation, we went downstairs for a lesson in applying the resist. Of course, I jumped the gun, and had potato starch soaking into my fabric a while. It may be ‘spud crud’ when it’s all done, but I did learn to pay attention. Of course the glass of wine with dinner had nothing to do with it!
That’s it for tonight – images include hanging samples on the line on a beautiful spring day, and my larger pieces with the potato dextrin applied. Tomorrow – dried dextrin and post discharge pictures, and my first foray into Thermofax screens. We’ll have a little more classroom time when it rains.

Coming to Columbus

All the supplies are loaded in the truck waiting to be delivered to the barn late this afternoon. I'm glad to be driving a truck; here's a picture of what it's carrying:


These include tubs of fabric and tools, quart mason jars with lids, 5 gallon buckets, and paint roller, iron, 'Big Board', sewing machine, desk lamp, floor lamp (not shown), camera & accessories, power strips, rotary cutter, rulers and mat and note-taking materials and sketchbooks. This all was loaded on Saturday morning; arrived at the hotel about 6:30.

The hotel (Best Western) is nice - it has all executive suites, so there's a kitchenette and sitting room. Breakfast is OK - 4 or 5 hot choices plus the usual suspects.

Nearby is Pickerington Ponds Wildlife Refuge. Great place to walk and birdwatch. Among other things, they have a viewing deck with a spotting scope trained on an Osprey nest. I saw a chick in the nest, and was lucky enough to see a parent swoop in for a landing. This is a decent view of the nesting stand - you had to use binoculars or the spotting scope to get a good look.

I also found an oriole nest from last year on the ground, and got to see a yellow warbler. This is stuff I like - tonight we get together at Nancy Crow's. More then.

Thanks for the surprise Karren

Decided to try discharge on turquoise Procion MX. Got this piece dyed yesterday and today I folded it and stitched circles in it following the directions in Karren Brito's Shibori book. Then I immersed it in 50% bleach solution - the bathroom exhaust fan and Darth Vader mask in use. Left it in a relatively long time - probably 10 minutes. Anyway, there was a general lightening, I think, but where the cotton quilting thread was left the bleach soaked in a lot. So, even though this looks like white fabric that was stitched and then dyed, it was largely turquoise that was bleached. Very fine detail - the circles are 4" if I remember the template size correctly.

Now I just have to figure out what next. With the detail, I suspect beads will figure into it, or the next one, somehow.