Thank you, Jane Dunnewold, for the inspiration

What a glorious day: clear, breezy, cooler. The heat and humidity having taken a day off, it was a perfect day to discharge lots of fabric. My backyard was definitely a well-ventilated area.

My husband wondered at my frame of mind  when he saw the box of instant mashed potatoes I had brought home from the grocery store. I assured him that we were not going to eat it. Instead, I cooked the potatoes (by cooking I mean whisking them in boiling water) and smeared the mixture over a piece of Kona black fabric on stretcher bars. Left to dry overnight, it was ready for discharging. More about this in my next post.

Below are fabrics ready to drop in the bleach water. I used one part bleach to four parts water.

 Some of the pieces in the rinse bucket

It was very hard to control the discharging with this method of binding, scrunching, and folding the fabrics.

I just finished watching the very inspiring 3-DVD set, Complex Cloth, by Jane Dunnewold. I got much better results when I used her method of directly applying the bleach to the fabric using a variety of methods: spritzing, stenciling, and stamping. Below is an example of using bubble wrap. I brushed the bubble wrap with bleach and then lay the fabric on top of it. It is possible to watch the progression of the bleaching and stop it whenever desired by putting it in the rinse water.

Next time I am going to use thickened bleach for the stamping and stenciling.


After rinsing thoroughly, I soaked the fabric in Anti-Chlor (from Pro-Chem) to stop the bleaching action.

My husband wondered what I am going to do with the fabric: Sell it? Make something with it? Fold it up and store it on a shelf? A practical person, he doesn't completely understand that I didn't know what I will do with it. I was creating and learning, which was enough for me. I feel like an artist today.