Belting It Out Again

My first two belts were so fun that I immediately had to start the next one. Besides, my kids line up quickly when there are cool goodies to be had, and there was my older daughter, jostling her way to the head of the line! My younger daughter had already made her own belt, so she was sated for the moment.

For the new one I found a chain pattern on a photo of a tile, and I adapted it to fit the 1.5-inch wide belt blank I was using. The first thing I did was dampen the leather and use the edge creaser to mark lines along the belt for the edges, about a quarter-inch in from each side.

Then I dampened the leather some more and traced the pattern, following with the swivel knife. The pattern is really intricate and tedious, so I did each step in small sections to make it more interesting: trace, knife, trace, knife, and so on.

The following picture shows me cutting the pattern with the swivel knife. The idea is that you pull the knife towards you, swiveling it along the traced line with your thumb and third-fifth fingers while your index finger keeps the knife steady.

Here is a picture of the pattern, partly traced and partly cut:

The trick with the swivel knife is that is has to be really well sharpened and polished all the time. Mine wasn't sharp enough--it isn't completely sharp when you buy it, so you have to sharpen it more yourself. If you don't, you get "drag" on the blade as you go along, and the cuts aren't as smooth as they should be. It's hard to see in the picture, but my cut lines are a little jagged.

Here I started tooling the pattern as I went along, mostly with a patterned beveling tool:

As I mentioned in my post on riveting, I often jump straight into a project without doing quite enough practicing or testing first. I did in this case, and found that for my particular pattern I didn't have quite the right beveling or patterning tools to give me exactly the look I wanted. I ended up doing a bit of rework right on the belt as I tried out different tools. Fortunately the rework didn't show much (and perfection is a bad thing, right?).

Here is the tooled belt at the buckle end. The pattern and tooling goes all the way to the other end of the belt (the billet end).

Dyeing to Dye

A big reason for doing this third belt was to try using dyes that were separate from the finish, instead of the Tandy's Eco-Flo All-in-One. This time I was using Tandy's Eco-Flo Leather Dye. Also, for this belt I was doing different colors for the different threads of the chain pattern.

Here you can see how the different colors (Deep Violet, Emerald Green, and Evening Blue) weave together:


Then I added the dark brown background (Dk. Coco Brown):


If I had stopped here, I probably would have been fairly happy with the colors. However, the process recommended by the guys at the shop was to clean off the excess dye using a soft cloth and Lexol leather conditioner. I did that, trying to avoid mixing my several colors (mostly getting my green and purple muddied with brown), and my belt ended up looking very faded:


I then put a second painstaking coat of dyes on the entire belt and cleaned it again with the Lexol. It looked only slightly better than it did in the picture above, but since painting the separate colors was such a pain, I decided it was good enough.

I covered the back of the belt in the dark brown. The Lexol didn't take off as much of the dye from the back (the rough "flesh side" instead of the smooth "skin side").

Here is how it looked after the second coat and cleaning (and hole punching):


Dyeing to Finish

I used Tandy Carnauba Creme as the finish for the belt. It's basically a blend of waxes in a water base. You smooth it on using a soft cloth (I've been using cut-up pieces of a worn out t-shirt). When the creme dries, you buff it with more cloth until the leather shines. When I was applying the creme, I found that quite a bit more dye came off onto the cloth. Just a little more dye comes off during the buffing stage, though (whew!).

I did find that the most finely-textured (stippled) parts of the belt design still showed little white spots of wax after the buffing with cloth. An old soft toothbrush in a gentle circular motion worked for those.

Here is the final belt. Not that I'm keeping score, but this one probably took me 30-40 hours to make (instead of 8 hours each for the blue and brown ones). Carving and tooling the pattern for this belt definitely took longer, but the big timesink came with the careful multiple coats of multiple colors.

In general, I'm not particularly happy with the way the colors came out. The purple looks more like pink, and the whole thing is a little too "distressed"-looking for my tastes. But my daughter cheerfully snatched it up and carted it off before I could change my mind about giving it to her, so I guess it's good by definition!


Solvent Salvation

California, where I live, has imposed a lot of environmental restrictions on volatile organic compounds (VOCs), that is, all the really useful and effective (and harmful) solvents. This means that many manufacturers have had to reformulate dyes, paints, and such to eliminate or lower their use of the "bad" solvents. Tandy's Eco-Flo dyes and other products are the water-based response to lowering the VOCs.

The "old-timers" who hang out and do their leather work together on Saturday mornings at the local Tandy store shake their heads sadly and say that it's just not like the good old days where you could dye your leather and get a good high at the same time. Well, they don't really say that, but the old solvents were very good at carrying dyes deep into the leather, and water, while the ultimate solvent of life, just isn't quite so good for leather dye. They do say the new dyes just don't work quite so well as the old versions. But that's life in California, and clean air is definitely a good cause.

Lacey Investigates


Lacey is pretty diligent about investigating objects left on the kitchen floor. Food? Treats? Toys? Those nasty VOCs?


Nope, no VOC problem here. A few treats would be nice, though...

Ooh, That Waxy Buildup!

I'm still preparing for my class for middle school kids. I usually sign up to do these things if it's something that I'll learn from, as well as something my students will learn from. In this case, I've designed the class intentionally so that I'll teach the kids some things I've never done myself! It forces me to try new things and gives me inspiration. The discharge dyeing was one of those crafts I'd never done before, but I'm planning to teach it, so I had to try it out (I still have more experimenting with that to do, too!).

The next topic for the class is batik. That's on purpose. When I first got the dyeing bug five years ago, thanks to my daughter's 6th birthday party, I went a little crazy with exploring the color-on-fabric medium and Dharma's catalog full of textile arts goodies. Among other things, I got a pound of batik wax and some tjanting tools for applying the wax, planning to try out doing batik. Five years later, the stuff was still sitting unopened in a drawer, so drastic measures were required, such as teaching it to kids!

I found a lot of information on batik on the web. For example, Paula Burch has an excellent discussion on batik on her extensive hand dyeing website. I also have a book called "Tie Dye To Die For & Batik You Can't Resist!" with good information, among others.

Getting Started

I melted the batik wax in its foil tin inside an old (that is, sacrificed to the cause) frying pan that was full of boiling water. I kept the stove burner on a low setting, but I found that the water had to be at a bubbling boil for the wax to get hot enough. If the wax is too cool, it beads up on the surface of the fabric. It has to penetrate the fabric thoroughly to resist the dyes properly.

Using the tjanting really takes some practice. I was just making a sampler on a bandana, not a work of art, so it didn't matter much if I got drips all over, but if I were to get serious about batik I'd need to work on my tjanting skills--for about a year! The hard part is to tilt the tool up just enough to stop its dripping from the tip, but not so much that the wax dribbles out the filling hole on the top and runs down your arm. Yikes.

Here is my pan of boiling water. The batik wax is on the left with the tjanting in it. Notice the frothy, bubbly water in the frying pan--that's what it looks like with lots of wax dripped into it by a tjanting amateur. "Bubbling like a witch's brew in a cauldron" would be a good way to describe what I found to be the right temperature.


I taped my bandana taut to a jelly roll pan (that's a cookie sheet with 1-inch high sides) so my working area would not touch the metal (a handy version of a silk painter's frame). That was useful because I don't have many empty flat surfaces in my house, so I could just stack this on top of everything else to be near the stove (works better than just dumping everything else on the floor!). I did have to keep shifting and re-taping the bandana to get at all of the bandana's area, though.


Here is my bandana with the wax applied. In the lower right corner I tried using a metal cookie cutter to apply the wax. That's supposed to be a frog. Near that is a big dark area where I painted wax on with a paintbrush between lines I had already done with the tjanting. I wanted to have a big area to test out the crackle effect.


I wadded up the corner of the bandana to crack that big area of wax and the surrounding areas (though all of the wax got somewhat cracked due to my generally-rough handling).


Other Resists

Because getting rid of the wax is such a pain, many people have tried out using other resists instead of the wax. They have various limitations, though, such as not producing the characteristic cracked effect found in real batik. At some point, while I was making glycerin soaps with my kids, it occurred to me that the soap itself might make a good resist that could then just wash right out at the end. The melting temperature and viscosity is similar to that of wax.

I melted some of the glycerin soap in the same frying pan full of water with my batik wax. That's the small handled pot in the picture above. I applied the soap to the upper right corner of my bandana with a second tjanting.


The glycerin soap is shinier and less yellow than the wax.

Dyeing

I used direct application for the dyes--I'm a big fan of immediate gratification! I gently soaked the bandana in a small bucket of soda ash solution, separate from my usual soaking bucket, because I didn't want to contaminate all my mixed-up soda ash solution with the water-soluble soap. Then I painted or squirted on dyes that I had around from recent tie-dyeing (same Procion dyes anyhow). One advantage of batik direct application is that I used less dye than I would have to tie-dye the same bandana. I let it sit overnight.


Resisting Resists

Next came the not-so-fun part, removing the resists. The soap, as expected, came right out in the cold-water rinse I always do for tie-dyes (to remove the soda ash and the worst of the excess dye). Then I tried various things to get rid of the wax. I tried bending it to remove the big chunks and drips. That helped a little. Scraping with a dull table knife was hopeless.

Then I tried boiling in water. Unfortunately I didn't have a multi-gallon pot (as Paula suggests) that I was willing to sacrifice to the cause. The wax and the soap might be food-safe, but there is still a lot of excess dye in the bandana. The pot I used was small, and the water immediately became dark blue with excess dye (and the bandana stuck out of the water in places, too). So if I wanted to change the water multiple times rather than boil blue dye onto my nice white batik lines, I had to do something about the wax. It was a mess. I scraped some off with a cold spoon, which helped some but was ridiculously tedious. I tried a fine strainer, which simply clogged. I tried paper towels in a coarse strainer, and the water poured past the paper towel (not held in well enough). I hate to think how much wax is now clogging my kitchen pipes!

I finally had done enough rinsing and wax removal that I wasn't concerned with dye redepositing. I went out to the garden, got a few rocks, and plopped them in to boil with my bandana and hold it down under the surface. I then let the water cool, and I scraped enough wax off the surface to get my bandana out.

I hand-washed the bandana with Synthrapol, let it dry, and here it is.


Since I was just making a sampler, I didn't worry about the age of the mixed dyes, so they look a bit more faded than an experienced Procion dyer would expect. The purple especially didn't hold its color--it was the oldest mixed dye. I've found that greens particularly, then purples and blues, lose their color strength the fastest (the New Emerald Green here was fresh). I've learned to make up fresh batches of dyes when I'm doing something where the color and brightness is important.

Here's the corner where I used the soap as the resist. Soap didn't get the really sharp, crisp edges wax gets, but it does get some cracking. I think it would have been helpful to have the soap a little hotter than the wax, though, so it could have penetrated a little better.


For my class, given that we won't have much time and there is very little budget, I'll show my students the difference between the wax and the soap, and then we'll use the soap. The soap has the advantage that it's easy to get in any craft store, and they can melt it using a microwave (repeatedly, but it does work). Then they can take their work home to wash it, and I won't have to worry about their parents calling me to complain about clogged drains!

And in my case, I still have a lot of wax to clean off the stove, the oven below it, the floor, the sink, the pans... I'd hate to lose my crafts-in-the-kitchen privileges. I'm getting close to that, though, since I still have my sewing machine on the kitchen table while I work sporadically on that jeans circle quilt. Eeek!

Dang Dog!

My little publicity hound somehow sensed I was going to take blog pictures tonight. I had just laid the white sheet and the bandana down on the floor and had gone into the other room to get my camera. In that short time, she went and found a squeaky toy and started cavorting with it in the middle of my photo setup!


My daughter tried to help distract Lacey while I set up again (but Lacey had no intention of letting go of the toy).


She only gets away with it because she's cute...


I'm thinking next time maybe I should batik the dog. But I'll have to use the soap instead of the wax. Wouldn't want any waxy buildup on that fluffy white fur!

Art, Science, and Cleaning Liquid

I've started doing some experimentation with discharge dyeing. That's "experimentation" as in "lab experiments".

I'm playing with discharge dyeing because I'm preparing to teach it to a bunch of middle school kids, and I haven't done discharge dyeing before. These kids are currently learning about the process of scientific inquiry and writing lab experiment reports. Their curriculum integrates that scientific method into several of their classes, and I'm going to integrate it into an art class too. I'm hoping they'll have fun doing the dyeing, so I won't make them write an actual report! In the meantime, it's time to brush up on doing lab reports myself (it's been quite a while!), and they can read mine. Here goes...

Lab Report

Title: Discharge Dyeing Using Liquid Cleanser with Bleach

Table of Contents

Introduction………………………….………………………………………………………page 1
Methods……………………..……………………………………………………………....page 2
Materials……………………..…………….………………………………………..page 3
Variables……………………..…………….………………………………………..page 4
Procedures……………………..…………….………………..……………………..page 5
Data & Observations……………………..…………….………………………………..…..page 6
Analysis……………………..…………….……………………………………..…………..page 7
Conclusion……………………..…………….………………………………..……………..page 8
Works Cited……………………..…………….……………………………………………..page 9

Introduction

Background & Purpose

Discharge dyeing is the process of stripping out color that is already in the fabric (bleaching it) for artistic effect. Sometimes discharge dyeing happens by accident, such as when a cleanser with bleach in it was spilled on my favorite electric blue bathmat. It took me a while to realize how it got those bright pink spots on it, since bleaching doesn't always make the fabric white--often other colors result, depending on the dyes that were used. Here is a good example of accidental discharge dyeing.

There are many ways to do discharge dyeing. The methods and chemicals used depend on what type of fabric you want to alter. For example, common chlorine bleach works well on cotton, but it will deteriorate wool or silk fibers. For silk or wool, sodium hydrosulfite or thiourea dioxide can be used instead.

In addition, you can use different methods to achieve different bleaching or lightening effects. For example, to lighten an entire piece of cotton fabric, you might dip it in a dilute solution of chlorine bleach and water. However, to create stenciled effects, it might be helpful to have a thicker bleaching compound. The web page "DISCHARGE DYEING WITH COMET GEL" suggests using Comet Liquid Gel or Soft Scrub with Bleach for discharge dyeing with stencils.

Since I am planning to do stenciling with discharge dyeing, I decided to investigate how well the Soft Scrub with Bleach worked. The store had that and Safeway Liquid Cleanser with Bleach (on sale), so I got both.

My research question asks whether there is a difference between using different brands of liquid cleanser with bleach (Soft Scrub and Safeway) and how it is affected by time on the fabric. I selected my research question because I was curious as to which bleaching compound would work better and what time period was needed.

Hypothesis & Prediction

The hypothesis is that there is a slight difference in the performance of the two cleaning fluids for discharge dyeing, because store-brand products usually do not completely duplicate the national-brand products they are emulating (occasionally they are better). Typically the store-brand products are cheaper and may be made from cheaper materials. Because this is a non-standard use for the cleaning fluids, either may be the better performer for this purpose.

I predict that the outcome of my experiment will be that both products work for my purpose of discharge dyeing because both contain bleach. I predict that there may be a slight variation in the shades achieved with the two products. The null hypothesis is that there is no difference in the shades achieved with the two products.

Methods

Materials

• Soft Scrub with Bleach cleaning liquid (24 oz.)
  
• Safeway Cleaning Liquid with Bleach (24 oz)
  
• Denim fabric scraps (denim scraps from my jeans circle quilt) in various shades
  
• Two small applicator squeeze bottles
• Permanent marker (blue or black) that will show up on the darkest and lightest denim scraps
  
• Warm water for washing off the liquid cleansers (running water in a sink)
  
• Old toothbrush or scrub brush for scrubbing liquid cleanser off of denim scraps as needed
• Goggles and plastic gloves
  

Variables

• variable – something that can vary (or change) each time an experiment is done
• controlled variables – the variables that you "control" or keep the same during all of your experiment. Controlling is also called standardizing.
• manipulated variable – the variable that you are intentionally changing so that you can make comparisons between different situations, objects, or conditions. Also called the independent variable and is graphed on the x-axis.

The manipulated variables in my experiment were the brand of liquid cleanser, the time the cleanser spent on the fabric, and the shade of denim fabric.

• responding variable – the variable that is changing due to differences in the manipulated variable. It is the variable you are measuring and recording as the outcome of the experiment. Also called the dependent variable and is graphed on the y-axis.

• Since my experiment samples made up a 2-dimensional matrix with denim shade on one axis and time on the other axis, I essentially had multiple experiments. I controlled for denim shade against cleanser brand in one experiment, and I controlled for time against cleanser brand in the other experiment.
  

• My manipulated variables were the brand of liquid cleanser on the sample, the time it was allowed to sit on the sample before being washed off, and the original shade of the denim.

• My responding variable(results) was the whiteness/brightness (visibility) of the discharge-dyed area (the bleached mark on the fabric).

Procedures

1. Put on gloves and goggles.
   
2. Put some Soft Scrub cleanser into squeeze bottle (about half full) and mark the bottle as "A" with the permanent marker.
3. Put some Safeway cleanser into squeeze bottle (about half full) and mark the bottle as "B" with the permanent marker.
   
4. Prepare samples of the clean denim fabric scraps. Cut samples to sizes at least 2 inches by 6 inches. Cut four samples of each fabric shade (that is, cut 4 samples from each pair of jeans so you have multiple matching samples for each shade of denim).
5. Use the permanent marker to label each sample with a time (in minutes): 10, 15, 25, and 60 or Overnight (Note: for some shades I did not have enough for all four samples, so I made fewer samples).
6. Lay out all the samples on a table. You will have a matrix of samples with time in one direction and denim shade in the other direction.
   
7. Using the "A" (Soft Scrub) squeeze bottle, write an "A" on one end of each sample.
8. Using the "B" (Safeway) squeeze bottle, write a "B" on the other end of each sample.
9. Start the timer.
10. At the end of each interval (10, 15, 25, and 60 minutes or Overnight), wash out the samples for that time period under running warm water. Use the toothbrush or scrub brush if needed to get the cleanser grit out of the sample.
11. Set the samples out to dry.
12. Lay out all the dry samples and look at the quality of the discharge-dyed letters (A, B) on the samples. Are they hard or easy to see? Are the edges of the letters sharp or blurry? What colors are the letters (white, blue, pale blue, yellow, and so on)?
13. Write down observations for each sample based on the key chart below.
    

Data & Observations

Without very sophisticated equipment, determining the amount of bleaching is fairly subjective, so I have made up a qualitative scale (key table) by which the bleaching can be judged.

Here are the results for the various samples, according to the key given above. Click on the following table to enlarge it:


Here is a bar graph of the results, where each group of bars represents all shades bleached for a specific period of time. Click on the graph to enlarge it:


Here are photos of the bleached, rinsed, and dried samples, arranged by denim shade (dark, medium, and stonewashed). "A" is bleaching from the Soft Scrub cleanser. A "B" should appear on the right-hand side of each sample, but it appears only faintly in two of the samples ("dark 60 minutes" and medium overnight, "BO").

Dark denim at 10, 15, 25, and 60 minutes:


Medium denim at 10, 15, and 25 minutes and overnight:

Stonewashed denim at 10 and 25 minutes (15 minutes not shown):

As listed in the results table, the "B" (Safeway brand cleanser) is not visible at all in most of the samples, and is only very faint in the two where it appears at all.

I observed that the Soft Scrub cleanser turned yellowish or orange around the edges as it bleached the dyes below it, probably from reacting with the dyes. It also became just a little less shiny than it was when it was applied. The Safeway brand cleanser remained bright white and shiny just as it was when it was applied. For the overnight samples, both cleansers became slightly dried out and less shiny.

Analysis

In this experiment, I compared the bleaching effects of two different brands of liquid cleansers with bleach. I compared them across various soaking times. I also compared them across three different shades of denim.

I used an advanced set of equipment, my eyes, to collect the data (the responding variable), and quantified my results using the qualitative scale above.

The data does not support either the hypothesis or the null hypothesis. The null hypothesis was that the results would be the same for both brands of liquid cleanser, and that was clearly not the case, since the performance was very different between the two brands (and the Safeway brand barely bleached the denim at all). The hypothesis predicted a slight difference in performance between the two brands. Because the Safeway brand barely bleached the denim at all, while the Soft Scrub worked as expected (bleached the denim visibly in 10 minutes, and more with increasing time), I maintain that there is a significant, not slight, difference in bleaching performance between the two brands.

Conclusion

My personal prediction about the outcome of the experiment was surprisingly incorrect. I had expected the Safeway brand cleanser to produce results only slightly different from the results of the Soft Scrub cleanser, since both purported to contain bleach, which is the ingredient of interest. Instead, the Safeway cleanser had almost completely failed to bleach the denim, while the Soft Scrub cleanser had bleached the denim as expected. As expected, the Soft Scrub had produced more bleaching effect (whiteness) over greater time periods. For what little bleaching it did produce, the Safeway brand cleanser had also produced more bleaching for longer times, as expected.

Keeping the bleaching times precise was a challenge because I was participating in other activities at the same time and did not have a timer handy (just a wall clock). However, given the imprecise nature of quantifying the results, a minute or two, plus or minus, does not seem to affect the precision of the results. Also, I had originally intended to do a set of samples at five minutes. This became a ten-minute sample set because I missed the five-minute rinse time.

If I were to repeat the experiment again in order to do it more carefully or accurately, I would use one or more kitchen timers so I could time my experiment more carefully. I would also prepare somewhat smaller and more uniformly-shaped samples, and more of them so I could get a more complete data set.

For a future experiment, I would try using the Soft Scrub cleanser with additional types of fabrics beyond denim, such as with wools, synthetics, and so on, and with different colors and dyes, such as over-dyed jeans, printed synthetic fabrics, tie-dyed t-shirts, and so on.

Works Cited

WEBSITE

"DISCHARGE DYEING WITH COMET GEL" Purrfection Artistic Wearables. Dana Marie Design Co. 5 October 2008.
http://www.purrfection.com/projects/dischargedye.htm

"DISCHARGE DYEING". 5 October 2008
http://tpa4244-01.sp00.fsu.edu/discharge.htm

Vintage Threads(blog). "Discharge Dyeing Tutorial". 5 May 2008, accessed 5 October 2008.
http://vintagethreads.blogspot.com/2008/05/discharge-dyeing-tutorial.html

Hewitt, Paula. The Beauty of Life (blog). "Discharge dyeing: husbands and bleach don’t mix". 20 January 2008, accessed 5 October 2008.
http://paulahewitt.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/discharge-dyeing-husbands-and-bleach-don%E2%80%99t-mix/

"Discharge Dyeing FAQ". 5 October 2008.
http://www.quilt.com/FAQS/DischargeDyeingFAQ.html

Grace, Twila. Twila's Threads (blog). "Dye Discharge Results". 23 September 2007, accessed 5 October 2008.
http://twilagrace.blogspot.com/2007/09/dye-discharge-results.html

Of Bottles and Brushes

My tie-dyeing squirt bottles often get scummy inside, especially if I've left dye in them for long periods (weeks to months) or used thickener, which gets moldy after a while. Mmmm, yum. I've never been happy with those spindly baby bottle brushes for cleaning them, and a toothbrush often can't get to those scummy spots.

However, I have a bag of old toothbrushes (I just hate throwing things away!), a candle, and some needle-nosed pliers, so it's time to make what I need.


I heat the neck or head of the toothbrush gently over the candle flame. I have to be careful not to get the bristles in the flame, or they will shrivel up and become useless. Occasionally the brush might catch on fire. If it does, I just blow it out quickly and keep working. I'm not worrying about prizes for beauty on this job!

Once the handle plastic has become soft, I grab the head and do the bending with the needle-nosed pliers. I hold the head in the desired position until the plastic has cooled enough to hold its shape.


I modified several brushes to fit different parts of the insides of my squeeze bottles. Here are the resulting brushes. They come in very handy!


If you try this, be sure to work in a safe, well-ventilated area (I did it on the stove with the hood fan turned on full) and remember to wear your eye protection!