I’ve been doing some testing for my dye book. I realized that the longer I work with dyes, the more sophisticated my testing has become. Some of the work I did five years ago is incomplete. So along with the tap tests I did earlier this month, I decided to update my dye book with discharge effects. I went back through my samples and found the original test fabrics I did (because I don’t throw away anything!) and was able to use them to do the samples. I got a new discharge agent from ProChem called DeColourant. It’s citrus based and is supposed to be less toxic than bleach or thiourea dioxide. It comes in both a spray and paste so of course I ordered both.

So my discharge tests became very involved, five different discharge agents: bleach, soft scrub with bleach, thiourea dioxide, paste DeColourant, and spray DeColourant. I tried all five on cotton and rayon, and the three without chlorine on habotai and raw silk as well. And all of this with 43 different dye colors. Can you say obsessive?

So now I have lots and lots of little piles of little 1.5 inch squares of fabric with different discharge effects. I haven’t had a chance to compare them all because I don’t want to get them mixed up. In general, my observations are that soft scrub takes away more color than plain bleach and that the DeColourant doesn’t work that well. Now I just have to find time to paste the samples in my book so I can really see them. Oh the glamorous life of the fiber artiste!