Fiber Junkies - Working with Bleach

Our wonderful Fiber Junkies group met this past week at Gen's home for a day of experimenting and fun. Our good friend and FJ member Denny, gave us a huge supply of powdered bleach; we were anxious to play with this and other bleaching products. 

 This bleach is finely granulated making it easy to pour or sprinkle on a surface.

 First, we wet the fabric with a mister, and laid some resist type object on top. In the above, the leaf was cut out of a sticky back piece of foam and laid down first. The bleach was sprinkled onto the surface.

 This is some plastic webbing that Denny found at a construction site; we've used it often in our deconstructive screening play days. I thought it would work well, but the bleach migrated beyond the boundaries of the web and turned into a mish-mosh.

 We tried using stencils and carefully placing the bleach granules inside the negative space.

 These were successful.

 This was a tree stencil using granules of bleach. Kate had success with it; I didn't but I think next time I would spray the back of the stencil with a temporary adhesive so it makes a tight contact with the fabric. I would do this before I misted the fabric with water.

 Here is a fabric done with a stencil and left to dry....anxious to see how it works when washed.

 We also used a bleach pen to write on fabric. If you use a fresh pen, the bleach will start lightening as you watch it...fun!

 Mary tried the bleach pen through a plastic "lace holder" - worked well.

 This was my favorite and an effective way to use stencils for this technique. A drawback in using stencils is that they don't grip the fabric real tight and the bleach can seap underneath making the design lines very blurry. Kate suggested we use a blank silk screen on top of the stencil on top of the fabric and using a squeegee, run a thickened bleach over the screen. I used discharge paste which was thickened with sodium alginate - great results!

 Here is a piece that Val did using stencils and a blank screen, using hand dyes are a bonus as the different colors discharge differently making the image so interesting.

 Here is a piece that I did and my favorite piece of the day. I used the stencils with the silkscreen as well as a burned screen with thickened discharge paste. I'm happy with the results.

 This was a great stencil and happy to find a new way to use it.

 One of Vals screens which she made out of leaves she found outside...

 and a detail.

 Another one of Vals pieces using a hand dyed fabric.

 And Marys shown earlier using a plastic grid - love the results.

Here's my piece using the big tree stencil and powdered bleach. Kate had great success as you can see, mine is nothing resembling a tree - just another mish mosh......oh well....It was a great day with some wonderful and not so wonderful results but all was great fun. I wouldn't expect anything less from this great group of gals.