After mistakes and some experimenting, I finally got a piece of fabric that I am happy with. You can click it to see it enlarged.

After the last failure, I decided to mix up some turquoise dye with thiox discharge paste. I have done this in the past to get turquoise deposited where the fabric is discharged. For some reason, turquoise does not discharge. Remember that a couple of weeks ago, I was discharging black fabric. I had some paste mixed up and sitting in my dye kitchen. I blithely added turquoise dye and went to work.

I wore my respirator!

And after the fabric dried, I ironed it and then threw it in the wash. Guess what? I ended up with a piece of rust silk with no marks at all. Well, I forgot that thiox paste is only good for about 24 hours. Duh.

My next experiment was to mix dynaflow paint with the de Colourant paste. I made more marks on the rust silk.

After I steamed it with an iron, I could see from the back that the rust had discharged.

When I washed it, I got the subtle verde green color in the first photo. I am very happy with it.

I am working on two projects that need to be completed by next Monday. The other is for a juried show at my church, Trinity Episcopal, titled: Mirror, Mirror, a show of self portraits.

I did a self portrait a  few years ago for a Quilting Arts challenge — a Picasso version of my younger self. I decided to do an updated version and mount them together – sort of me – 50 years apart. The older me is more colorful! Here they are with the newer version a work in progress.

I have been having fun and feel very energized after a fallow period. The studio is a mess which means I am in creative mode.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 25th, 2010 at 9:39 pm and is filed under 12X12 challenge, Discharging fabric, Juried Shows, My creations, painting fabric, self portraits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.