Black, Baby, Black!

I've been experimenting with black and gray dyes recently. I used Better Black, New Black, Charcoal Gray, and Black Cherry (okay, that's more of a dark red), all Procion dyes from Dharma. I made them up in various concentrations, starting with "1" strength as the formula recommended on the Dharma site: 2 to 8 teaspoons (10-40 ml) and 1 tablespoon (15ml) urea per 1 cup of water for the Procion dyes. The blacks needed 8 teaspoons each, while the charcoal gray only needed 2 teaspoons. The black cherry took 4 teaspoons of dye per cup.

I then mixed up "1/4", "1/8", and "1/16" dilutions of those dyes by adding more urea-water to the appropriate amounts of the "1" solutions.

I also mixed up one teaspoon of sodium alginate thickener in one cup of water (stirring and letting it stand overnight). When completely dissolved, it was about the consistency of molasses or honey. I put about 4 teaspoons of thickener mixture into each cup of dye at the various strengths. That proportion is a little rougher, since I wasn't extremely exact on those measurements of the thickener!

I marked up an old white shirt with permanent marker, soaked it in soda ash, then dripped on small amounts of each solution. Here is the shirt still wet, just after dyeing. You can see the blue edges on some of the spots where the dyes separate. It's even worse without the thickener. I tried again in the lower right corner after doubling the amount of thickener in the solutions (for "1/4" strength dyes).

Here is the same shirt after sitting overnight, then washing and drying. It looks like a chromatography experiment with all the bleeding and color separation!

If I need to do anything sharply black, I'll have to add a lot more thickener in the future. However, I really love the bleed effects and I like to use them intentionally to get all sorts of subtle shadings.

Time to Dye

This isn't my usual palette of blues, greens, and purples, but once I had all those different solutions mixed up, I had to use them, right?

Here is a "Moonlight Sonata" crop top done with a repurposed United Colors of Benetton shirt. I love the word "repurposed". It's like a "pre-owned" car. It sounds so much better than "used" or "thrift shop"! It even sounds better than "recycled", even if it's a little slower rolling off the tongue. I stitched the moon with dental floss and covered it with the repurposed thumbtip of a used rubber glove secured by the floss ends. No, the dental floss wasn't "used", though I guess using it for something other than teeth counts as "repurposed"!

I only did the moon on the front layer of the shirt.

Long "Moonlight Sonata" shirts: I made two of these, different sizes, opposite designs. You see the back of the left one and the front of the right (the front has ties at the neck). These shirt blanks are new from Dharma: Light Jersey Extended Sleeve shirts.

They are REALLY thin shirts, but I rather like the results. I'll have to get some more of these. They'll be good for high-resolution geometric designs.

I call these my "Three Sisters" shirts. I love the subtle shades. I used all the various blacks, grays, and the "black cherry" color. The shirts are cotton-spandex shirts from Justice, a chain store catering to pre-teens. I happened to pass by it one day and plain (white) shirts were on sale. I nearly cleaned out their supply! The "Two Sisters" (my kids), immediately ran off with them.

Here's a cotton bandana. It was folded, tied, soaked in soda ash and then let dry completely before dyeing.

I'm pretty happy with the results of my experiment. I might just have to use blacks more often!

Dye Week at the Middle School

After months of off-and-on preparation work, I finally did my week-long half-day dyeing class for a bunch of middle school girls. We spent the time exploring several different ways of using "resists" with dye to create patterns on fabric. Like any class, it had both successes and failures, but overall, I think it went well, and both the girls and I learned a lot.

Day by Day

Monday we did basic tie-dye patterns such as stripes and spirals and rays, and each girl tie-dyed a white t-shirt. This is the same sort of thing I've been doing with groups for quite a while now, and the individual results mostly varied depending on how carefully they tied and dyed their shirts.

Tuesday we did stitch resist on bandanas. Stitch resist didn't work very well for the class. Most of the girls (grades 6-8) had trouble stitching their designs (on cotton bandanas) and pulling and tying them tightly enough, so the stitching didn't really resist the dye and their designs got lost. On the other hand, a shibori technique of folding and clamping silk hankies with various clips worked very well. Almost all the girls came out with strongly-geometric designs that were really beautiful.

Here is the group with their shibori silk hankies:

What beautiful patterns!


Wednesday we did discharge dyeing (bleaching dark colors to have light-colored patterns). We started with an experiment where we put Soft Scrub with Bleach on many different scraps of fabric to see what effects it would have. We saw that on the all-synthetic socks we got no effect, but that on dark blue fabric we got nearly white patterns. We then did designs on black T-shirts. Since I had gotten black shirts specifically meant for discharge dyeing, and I had run out of prep time beforehand, I hadn't tried one before class. They turned out to work well, bleaching much faster than I had expected, to a nice rust color (they don't bleach to white from the black). Several girls also bleached patterns onto jeans with stencils (I love that part--those jeans are now their own designs, not those of some brand name designer!). This technique was a big hit! One girl liked it so much she did more of it for the rest of the week during any free moments. We also did "regular" tie-dye on tote bags while they were waiting for the Soft Scrub to work.

Thursday we did "fake batik" (using glycerin soap instead of wax) on bandanas. The soap batik counts as the main failure for the week. Even though I had been successful with it in my trials at home, the conditions in class made it a lot harder. The main difference was the temperature of the melted soap when the girls tried to apply it to the cloth. At home, I worked right at the stove, and the soap stayed an even high temperature the whole time. At school, I couldn't have the girls working over the portable electric burner I used, so I took the pot to their table once the soap was melted. The soap cooled much too quickly, clogged up the tjanting tools, and hardened before going onto the fabric. Since the soap didn't penetrate the fabric properly, so it didn't resist the dye, and the designs were mostly lost. Wax would have had all the same problems under these working conditions (no heat at the working table). One additional problem with soap, though, is that very thin lines can get washed out in the soda ash soak, and many of the girls' lines were too thin as well.

Friday I gave them each another cotton bandana, and we all folded them into eighths (triangles). I then showed them the marking-pen-and-pleating technique that I first learned from Michael Fowler's Art of Tie-Dye DVD. They dyed their pieces, and then I let the pieces sit about an hour. I rinsed them in cold water enough so we could look at the designs and hang them out to display for the end-of-week assembly. They came out beautifully, with bold geometric patterns. We finished the week with a short but fabulous fashion show at the assembly.


Now That It's Over

I had a lot of help with running this class. One of the moms came in to help for the whole class, and my housemate came in for two days as well (many thanks to both of them!). For a class of nine girls, that ended up being about the right amount of help, so nobody had to wait too long before we could help them The girls did need a fair amount of help, especially with the stitching and the batik, though not as much help as the first graders I usually work with.

If I were to do this class again, I'd do it a bit differently. I'd skip the stitch resist and the batik completely and save those for the adult classes. I'd do more "classic" patterns like crinkle on white shirts and bandanas. One thing I'm glad I did right was to confine the discharge dyeing to using just the Soft Scrub, and not using buckets of bleach in water or spray bottles of bleach and water. I had several pretty high-energy kids in this class, and those could have been a disaster. The Soft Scrub is really easy to deal with from a safety and control perspective.

Budget is always a factor for classes like these. I had a budget of $20/girl for the whole week, or $180 total. Bandanas are good pieces for the class. They cost about $1 each in bulk. I buy them at the same time I buy lots of other stuff, like all the inexpensive white t-shirts (about $2 each) and black t-shirts (about $3 each) . Silk hankies were less than a dollar each and the results were very satisfying; I'd do more of those next time. Tote bags were about $3 each. I spent about $22 on four bottles of Soft Scrub, and most of it got used up! I spent about $1.50 per girl on gloves (they preferred larger reusable latex gloves over the close-fitting disposable nitrile gloves), and the rest was trash bags (for smocks), dye (the largest portion, about $25) and chemicals. I've already got many sets of goggles and most of the infrastructure equipment (squirt bottles and such).

One thing the kids liked, of course, was that there was a lot of stuff to take home with them, and it was even better because they had made the pieces beautiful.

So would I teach this class again? Oh yeah, next chance I get!

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

Progress in Various Directions...

Well, the jeans circle quilt still isn't done, but Lacey is pleased to point out that I've now got all the colored pieces arranged to my liking. It took several days, partly because I wanted to let it rest (kind of like bread dough) for a day or so and then look at it again and rearrange a few pieces. I did that process a few times until I was happy with it (or sick of it, anyhow!).


If you look in the upper right corner of the picture, you can see the baby fence I put around the quilt to keep Lacey off it. It was totally useless; the moment I opened it to go in (I'm too short to climb over easily), she was right there in the middle of the quilt, waiting to have her picture taken!

Now I'm slowly pinning in the batting pieces as I watch the Olympics on TV (one of my current distractions).

One of my other distractions recently has been playing with shibori itajime dyeing (Japanese tie-dyeing with clamps or objects clamped to material). I did a fair amount of shibori work, including stitch resist, binding, and clamping, when I first started doing tie-dye, and off and on ever since. I love the possibilities it provides, and I especially love the surprises that result from folding and clipping the fabric in various ways.

Here are a few of the experimental "play" pieces I did a few days ago. With the shooting star and the butterfly I'm experimenting with using shibori in a more representational manner.


By the way, if you are interested in any of the baby rompers, I've got them in my Etsy shop at http://amethistle.etsy.com. Much as they liked these, my own kids outgrew such things ages ago, and I'm working through my stash of white blanks. Sorry, my husband has already nabbed the big T-shirt!

Project Managment and Artistic Challenges

I knew when I took on the jeans circle quilt project that it was big and that it would take a lot of work (no, it's not done yet!). But like any big project, it's also subject to project planning and constant reevaluation.

One of my friends recently asked me what percentage of the project was finished. He's been spending way too much of his time doing project management in the last few years! But I was able to figure out that I was maybe 30% percent along at the time, after about 6 weeks.

I've recently been spending a greater percentage of my time on the project, rather than just cutting circles while waiting for my kids at chorus practice and such, so it has been speeding up a bit. I've now gotten all the circles sewn together into three sections for easier handling going forward (in this picture it is 11 sections).

However, having reached that milestone, I'm doing what drives project managers (and workers) crazy all over the world--dropping the project completely for a while while I focus on other projects.

In the meantime, I did another favorite task of project managers: the prototype. I made a separate 9-circle square prototype quilt. I found a bandana similar to the tie-dyed sheet I'm planning to cut up, got the batting, got the fancy shiny variegated thread I'm planning to use, and put them all together.


I tried out various stitches, widths and lengths of stitches, and so on. The prototype itself took quite a while (as they often do). In this case, though, it was very valuable to do the prototype (as it often is). I learned a lot from it. I wish I had done it sooner, as it has also opened up the project to a lot of reevaluation. Roughly translated, I hate the results of the prototype!


As part of the reevaluation I've decided I hate the shiny variegated thread. It looks too busy with everything else, and it's slippery and extremely hard to work with. So I'll be going with navy blue cotton thread instead. I've also decided I want thicker batting, so it's back to the store for that, too.

So once I get back to the project, I can pick back up on my project planning and keep my friends informed! What I still have to do is just cut up the colored fabric into squares for the other side, cut the batting too, and put it all together (I figure just arranging the fabric squares to a pleasing design will take me two or three days of work!).

Et voila! Instant quilt! Yeah, right! Maybe by December...

What Do You Mean, "Soak It"?

One thing that often happens, especially in the uncontrollable chaos of group tie-dyeing at YMCA family camp, is that someone will carefully tie his or her piece and start dyeing it, then hear me telling someone else to go soak their tied piece in the bucket of soda ash solution.

"What do you mean, 'soak it'? I didn't do that..."

Thus begins a process I call a "rescue". The Procion fiber reactive dyes I use need the soda ash to make the color bond to the fibers in the fabric, making the colors permanent. What I usually do for these cases is place the dyed piece in an empty bucket and pour some of the soda ash solution over it (one year a camper dumped her blue piece in the main soda ash bucket on top of other pieces that were soaking. They all got dyed pale blue!) and let it soak. I then have the owner put more dye on to counteract the small amount of washing out that happens when we soak it.

The Experiment

This rescue process seems to work well enough, but I was curious as to how much of a difference it really made. So while I was there at camp, I tried an experiment. I tied three identical prewashed cotton bandanas the same way. I soaked one in soda ash, then I dyed all three the same way. The other two were dyed without soda ash. I took one of those two and did a "rescue", pouring soda ash over it and then adding more dye. I then let them sit overnight and washed as usual. So my three bandanas are the "control" (usual process), the "no soda ash", and the "rescue".

One initial observation: I generally dislike dyeing dry fabric, with or without soda ash (some people advocate soaking tied items in soda ash, drying them out and then dyeing). Even if the item is prewashed, the dye often beads up, runs off in unwanted directions, or pools up. Once it does soak in, it tends to spread unevenly. With the soda-ash-soaked bandana, the dye goes in smoothly and spreads more evenly, while I have to pretty much force the dye into the two dry bandanas.

The Results

There was a distinct difference among the three finished bandanas after I washed them out, though not quite as much difference as I expected. In the following picture, the "control" (usual soda ash soaking) sample is on the left, the "rescue" is on the right, and the one in the middle has no soda ash at all. The middle sample is definitely more dull and faded-looking than the other two, especially for the dark cobalt blue triangles on the sides. They are at least a shade lighter than their counterparts on the other bandanas. The "rescue" sample has more vibrant colors than the untreated sample, though it lacks the definition of the "control" sample.


I think part of the difference in pattern definition between the rescue and control samples may be due to dyeing on dry fabric--the dye absorption and spreading properties are different. Also, when the dyed "rescue" sample is soaked in soda ash after dyeing, the soda ash solution may be spreading the dye, blurring the whiter areas you see in the "control" sample. The re-dyeing after soaking may also aggravate the blurring.

Here is another picture where you can see the differences more directly (click on the picture to see a larger version).


Conclusions

It's clear that the best process for nice sharp tie-dye is to soak the item in soda ash before dyeing it. However, given that mistakes often happen, I think doing the "rescue" process is preferable over just going without the soda ash, so I'll continue to recommend that as necessary.

One further thing I want to do is to wash all three bandanas a couple more times. I know from experience that I won't see much change in the colors for the two that had soda ash, but I wonder if the untreated bandana will show visible washing out of the colors. I'll be doing a lot of
tie-dye washing in the next week or so, so I'll put an update out later.

Epi-dog (Gratuitous Dog Picture)

Once again, my dog Lacey, knowing how fabulous she looks on tie-dye, decided to help me out when she saw me getting ready to take tie-dye pictures! That's the "rescue" sample.


Aaaawwww...