Why Experimenting Is Good

I have one large piece left of the Testfabrics 419WB which discharged from black to white, along with a few scraps, and like most of you, I'm afraid to use something when I only have one piece left. I can't find anything else that discharges like this, everything you buy now discharges to orange.  I decided to experiment with a scrap before committing myself to the large piece.  

I started with the black fabric 19 x 24 and stitched it with black cotton thread, with 100% wool as the batting.  Then I painted bleach on, and got the results above.  In the back of my mind I had been thinking about adding some color by using shibori.  My friend Jayne had shown me a scarf she'd made using navy and turquoise together and it was gorgeous. So the orange thread you see is the start of stitching and then

gathering the piece tightly.  I followed my initial machine stitched lines when I gathered it, because I wanted the blue dye deposited along those lines.

This is the piece soda soaked, waiting for the thickened dye.

I thought I wanted the shiboried lines darker blue and then I planned to paint lighter blue over the whole piece.  Remembering this would shrink everytime I washed it in hot water, and dried it, I decided to combine the two dye steps.  After sitting for 4 hours tied up, I clipped the stitching and started to paint lighter blue dye over the whole piece.  What you see above is me remembering to take a picture half way thru this process.  I batched it another 4 hours, then washed with cold and hot water.  I didn't dry it in the dryer as I knew that would add significantly to the shrinkage.( Every time I say that I think of George Costanza)

The results were not great, I think blue white combo isn't working well.

I decide to overdye the whole think with really watered down 602 black from ProChem.  When this black is watered down it produces a beautiful blue. After washing it in hot water three times, the piece shrunk to 15 x 16.

 

So this is the end result.  It's ok.  Not great.  Honestly, I liked it better before I started adding color to it.

Next time, I think I will thicken the bleach a bit more so I have more control over the process, and maybe not add any color at all.