I’ve started a new group locally in which we’re going to meet every first Friday of the month and work on different surface design techniques. There will be 3-5 of us. This first time, we had three and we had a blast. We worked on discharging with various bleach products. I have done this before but not much. The piece above is a hand dyed fabric that I then stenciled some Soft Scrub through a square stencil. I did four squares but didn’t get enough bleach in two of them.

This is a piece of rusted cotton fabric that I had dyed with black acid dye (old) and it turned a grayish blue. So I shibori wrapped it and stuck it in a bleach solution.

Here’s another view. We decided it looked like the Gulf oil spill. Not sure what I’ll do with this piece but it turned out better than expected.

Next, I started playing with some old t-shirts. I used several of my bark stamps and then sponged on more Soft Scrub. The sponged parts didn’t all get enough bleach so I may add some more to this later.

Hubby gave me this blue t-shirt from the Salt Lake City Olympics and the first time I wore it, I washed the bathtub and bleached out the middle section under the embroidered logo. So it has been sitting in the closet for years. So I tied it up and threw it in threw it in the bleach solution. We didn’t have enough bleach for it to penetrate well. But it always surprises me that blue discharges to red.

This sleeve is my favorite part.

Here’s the back – I actually like the back better than the front. I may do some more discharge on this as well and I will probably cover up the logo on the front.

This was an experiment. I had some polyester batting that I had painted with inks. I then took a brayer with Soft Scrub and brayered across it. I like the patterning I got. I did rinse this and put it in bleach stop agent and it lost a lot of it’s color from the inks. But still interesting experiment.

Then I started bleaching some papers that I had previously painted with acid dyes. I hate to throw away my dyes and they don’t keep very well so I paint on paper with them. I rolled the Soft Scrub on with the brayer again. Isn’t it cool?

This is the back of the paper above. Look at that rusty orange – amazing color differences from front to back.

This is a paper towel with acid dyes and then sponged on bleach.

And the back. I am planning on doing some further experimenting with these papers. I may do some stitching with them and play around with different ideas in my studio journal.

I am really excited about the new group. The two people who are in it so far are both wonderful fiber artists. I took a piece that I have been working on for ages and got a wonderful idea on how to finish it. I haven’t ever shown this piece on the blog because I thought I might enter it into a show. Now that I have an idea for finishing it, it’s much more likely to happen instead of just languishing around the house. Next month, we are going to marble scarves. I’ve never done marbling before and I’m really looking forward to it. Hope you all have a wonderful week!