obsession, distraction, experimentation, whatever

I have become enamored of playing with Jacquard Discharge Paste. It began with playing with some old, cast aside pieces. And the fact that I couldn't fin the anti-chlor to use bleach. But now I'm hooked.

The paste is just that--about Elmer's glue strength, can be thinned with water. I usually brush it on with a small flat brush, but I've also tried stamping it on, and I know people use it with silk screens. You paint it on, let it dry, then iron it with a hot steam iron and the color (mostly) goes away. And one of the best parts is you can use it on silk.

Here's what it looks like after stamping it onto a commercial cotton:



It is a challenge to figure out how much and where to put it on since the paste shows up as a wet mark on the fabric. But you wait until it's dry, and iron it, and get something like this (disregard the darkness of the background, that's a fault of the photographer not something to do with the discharge):



The stamp experiment (done with one of my small stamps) was not quite as successful as I wanted it to be--I think the relief on the stamp wasn't deep enough. But overall I got what I was expecting. Oh, and I had masked out a circle using a freezer paper stencil so I had a hard edge.

Discharge paste also does cool things to hand dyes. Here's one where I just drew in a tree with the edge of a flat brush:



This is out of my daily journal, so it's just a sketch. But I see great potential there.

I also just used it to highlight an area on a piece of silk--something I could not have done with bleach. And playing with this is getting me back in the swing of working regularly in the studio. Another good thing.