Discharging

I tried my hand at discharging with bleach (next stop Home Depot to pick up a respirator...) on Christmas Eve. I started with a black strip of cotton and accordion folded it and clamped it. I actually ended up using 8 clamps, not 4. I'm sorry for the horrible quality of this picture. My goal was to make a scarf like this (scroll down) from Malka Dubrawsky's blog for Aaron's mom for Christmas.


I ended up with this:
Pretty sweet! My second strip did not turn out the same color however. I think there were two reasons for this. I moved the bleach outside, due to ventilation issues, so the bleach was much colder than the first time. Also the discharged dye was in the bleach, which contributed some color to the second piece of fabric. So I ended up making up a new bleach bath to get the same color and it worked.


Then I dyed it tangerine to get a bright orange color. The resulting color is very red though. We march on (time is ticking). Aaron sewed a thin quilt filling to the back of the red fabric then sewed it all to a piece of black fleece. We gave it to her unfinished, I just had the feeling it was too "ladybug". So I decided to sew spirals inside all the circles.


I'm really happy with how it turned out. It feels nice and it was a good introduction to "free form" sewing for me. Next project a camera strap from my own batiked fabrics! I got this book for Christmas - so excited!

At this point we have no plans for fringe, but I feel like it could use something. Beads? I'm not sure, any suggestions?