Discharging Fabrics with Ruth

Well what a busy few days. On day 1 with Ruth we tried devore, thickened procion dye and direct dye painting. Then on Friday we tried discharge printing and more direct dye painting. I really enjoyed the discharge technique as I have wanted to try it for ages but never dared. I thought that it would be really messy and smelly but it wasn't that bad. Ruth is really good a showing how you can achieve a lot in a small space and without a dedicated dye room with lots of sinks! We worked on laminated sheets and cleaned everything up with baby wipes! My favourite tip was using baby wipes to clean up!!!! I will definitely be trying more dyeing stuff at home now that I have seen how easy it can be to do in a small space and how easy you can clean up.

Anyway, enough of my waffle here are some pictures of the fabrics I discharged. One is cotton that I had dyed lime green and the other is black discharge velvet. In both cases I have printed with plain discharge paste and then printed with magenta textile paint added to the discharge paste.

The only thing that disappointed me was that everyone else had made really abstract blocks that worked really well and I had leaves! I went on to try some more abstract images as well but I do quite like these canna leaves.