Today I worked on another baby quilt for charity. The fabric was donated and was fun to put together, it needed some quilting in the center of the blocks so I quilted a star in each one. Very fun. Think I've done enough charity baby quilts for a bit........need to do some sewing for myself soon.
Recently I silkscreened discharge paste onto a handwoven chenille scarf. I hadn't done this in a while, I did think to check my discharge paste to make sure it was still good unlike last time when it had lost it's umpf. The paste almost worked too good as it bled through to the wrong side so the backside of the scarf has ghost images of the gingko leaves. This has never happened before......but I'm wondering if maybe it was the different brand of chenille that was the culprit. The scarf is fine but I'm not happy with that happening.
Here it is finished. It's amazing how different brands of chenille will discharge completely different - usually I get a really yellow gold but this chenille discharged to a goldy/lavender.........it's very pretty......just different. This scarf is up for sale in my
etsy shop. One of the pictures in the listing does show the ghost imaging on the backside if anyone is interested.
The ginkgo scarf is gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteI've never heard of discharge paste and I don't really understand what it does but it looks fun and the results are great!
ReplyDeleteThink of discharge paste as you would bleach - it takes dye out. It's a different chemical than bleach though. It's kind of globby like a cross between pudding and jello so it doesn't spread like bleach would - I can silkscreen or stencil it in that form.
DeleteYou can also use it on commercial fabrics but just like yarns you'd have to do a little test area to see if it works on the commercial dyes used and also to see what color it discharges out to. I'm so glad I tested on small bits of handwovens/fabrics as a few discharged out to really ugly colors so I didn't use it on the finished item.
I use the Dharma Discharge Paste. It lasts several years although I found out a few years back that after 10 years it wasn't effective so I bought a smaller bottle instead of a gallon the last time.
The scarves are beautiful. And although I hear you about not being happy, the ghost gingkos are nice, too.
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