My origami shibori

Here is a piece that was origami folded, then resisted in my own way and immersion discharged. You can see that the discharge did penetrate well.

Some nice fuzzy edges, eh?
This and others that were done at the same time are here.

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Bleach

I do not use bleach.
For those of you that have read any of my articles about discharge you know I don’t think there is any justification for the use of bleach. Here is a picture, from La Bricoleuse, of the inintended consequences of using bleach;

True, bleach immediately destorys protein fibers including silk. It also is destructive to cellulose, just more slowly. Using bleach on cotton requires careful control of all varibles, temperature, concentration and time, to assure that the bleach destroys the dye before it destroys too much of the fibers. This kind of control is rarely availble in artists studios.
I do discharge on a daily basis. I use thiourea dioxide which does not attack the fibers. I can be used on silk and cotton ( that is all fibers). It is heat activated , so cooling stops the action–I find this gives me more control. Others like that bleach is active at room temperature, but then stopping it requires another chemical. For me, it is easier to heat to activate( by way of boiling in a pot, heat gun, iron, dryer), rather than struggling to deactivate.
Buying bleach at the supermarket near home instead of a dye supplier does not mean that it is easier or safer to use properly. You still need a specailized chemical, usually from the dye supplier, to stop the action of the bleach. Bleach and thiourea dioxide both require a respirator with acid gas cartridges. You may not like the sulfur based smell when using thiourea dioxide ( thio means sulfur) but the smell of bleach is chlorine gas that was used a posion gas in WW I.

Dried

Time and a change in the weather allowed the poles from last week to dry. This silk dried and unwound silk looks like this:

Here you can see clearly that the inside of the silk, that is the part compressed between the string and the pole, maintained the orginal color, black. This colorway, which is called black/champange, is a discharge only color. Of course I dyed the black so that it would discharge this color, normally the Lanaset black dye discharges to off-white with blue tones. This piece will be opened and finished with beads and a logo, which is my signature.
The other poles from that same batch were over dyed and look like this coming off the pole.

And this leather has also dried.
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This leather looks pretty raggety, the part that was the seam is not pleated. I actually tore one piece when I opened the seam. I hope inserted into the jacket it will be fine. We may have to piece (seam) or stretch some of the pieces to get enough for all 6 pattern pieces we need.

Discharge-more resources

Here are some additional web based resources for those of you, like me who like to have as much info as possible:
http://www.emich.edu/textiles/PDFs/thiox.pdf
http://www.prochemical.com/directions/Thiox.htm
http://www.prochemical.com/directions/Formosul.htm
http://www.prochemical.com/directions/BleachingWool.htm
This talks about the dischargability of Jaquard acid dyes(you’ll have to click how to to get to the table):
http://www.jacquardproducts.com/products/dyes/aciddye/
I don’t use chlorine based bleaches because I don’t want to produce organochlorine-persistent organic pollutants. I can not use bleach on silk and thiourea dioxide works on everything, so I keep my studio simple with one discharge reagent. But for those who use bleach:
http://www.emich.edu/textiles/PDFs/bleach.pdf
http://www.prochemical.com/directions/MonagumBleach.htm
http://www.prochemical.com/directions/AntiChlor.htm
I’ll post a list of discharge colors for Lanaset dyes. Does any one know of a list/table of dischargeability of Procion MX dyes?

Discharge

There has been some need for information on dischargeing of dyed colors so I’m put up here in a printable pdf format an article that appeared in ShopTalk of the Newsletter of the Surface Design Association.
Download file
I have many notebooks of samples of different discharge reagents on acid dyes, and as I can take photos of the samples I’ll post them.