Play Date

Did we use to do this in Kindergarten?  What fun to have all sorts of toys and to just play.  How does this work?  How does this look?  What if I do this... or that?  Then it looks good or maybe it needs something more.  All that my friend Debra and I did was to enjoy the day and let our left (?) brain have a field day.  Whatever your choice of fun we all need to just turn off the production mode; due date; and "I have to get this done".. mind set and enjoy the fun.  So have a end of summer fling and see what come of it.

Oh I forgot to mention we also had a wonderful salad.  I didn't include the great sugar cookies.  They were gone before I got the camera out!

Just a note, I get to go off and have some fun but won't be near a machine to update my blog, so don't worry I am not losing interest just off getting inspired.

Friends, Food, Fabric -

Hostess Marjan Kluepfel getting friends into the spirit of the day!

What a great day with good friends, food, and fabric.  On Wed Marjan Kluepfel was hostess to the Critique Group. After a exciting review of our latest work we were led by Marjan in the process of Dye Discharge.  If you have never tried this process, please do so because it is more fun and not much preparation or work.  While there are always lessons to learn the basic idea is a 50/50 mixture of household bleach and water.  Fabric is cotton (prewashed) and while solids show off stamps and templates a fabric tone on tone or pattern give surprises.  Below are some examples.

Here is Debra Hosler, Peg Fairbrook, Pam Berry & Louise Schiele preparing their fabric.

I had folded this fabric into thirds then randomly secured with rubber bands.  The bleach mixture was then "painted" over piece.  Secondary color showed immediately!  Marjan explained manufactures will  over dye one color fabric with black.  The first colors are what give you the surprise.  My surprise was the design of the folding/bands, because being a bit compulsive I had cut small pieces of my fabric and soaked them in pure bleach for 6 min.  My inner child likes some control!

Here I am using snowflake patterns I had cut out of freezer paper.  Then I used a spay of the bleach mixture to get these results---

Can you see the potential of this process?  The drips from the spray bottle make interesting marks.  This process is so immediately gratifying!

Here are some of the results.  The long orange/brown to the left is fold/band fabric discussed above.

This is Louise Schiele's patterned fabric.  You can see the original pattern in the lower right.  Can you just imagine what Louise will create with this?

Important! Safety requires that you work in a place where bleach won't splash onto something important; you should wear old clothes; and wear eye protection and gloves.  If you use a spray bottle watch out for spray and do not reuse bottle or any other purpose.

What an exciting process and it is so easy.  Anyone can do it!  So just grab some fabric, mix a 50/50 mixture of bleach/water and go for it.