Discharging Colour

Removing or discharging colour can create a new visual effect in a plain coloured fabric. I decided to be brave (or foolish) for this assignment and try to discharge colour from a fabric I would then use for my final sewing project.

I purchased a lightweight, reddish colour, cotton fabric to make a casual top with. I thought the style of the top would look good in a tie dye type pattern. I burned a small swatch of the fabric to make sure it was cotton, since discharging works best with cellulose fibres and does not work on synthetics. Luckily this fabric passed the burn test. I washed and dried the fabric and then got out the pattern pieces I would need to make the top. After placing them on the fabric to check where they would fit, I cut the fabric into several pieces as I thought it would be interesting to make different discharged patterns in different parts of the top. I tried discharging colour on sample pieces of the fabric using a paste bathroom cleanser (Vim) and with chlorine bleach. The bleach seemed to work best so that is what I decided to use.

I gathered up circles of the main fabric (to be used for front and back pieces of the top) and secured them with elastics.

I then got my work area ready. In the first dishpan I put the bleach mixed with water. I had started with a ratio of about 5:1 water to bleach as this was recommended on several websites. However, in my trials this did not seem too effective on my fabric so I made it closer to 3:1. In the second dishpan I had cold water to stop the bleaching action, and the third had hydrogen peroxide for further neutralizing.

I put my fabric in the bleach solution and left it for 10 minutes. I did not want to leave it too long as I was using quite a strong bleach mixture and did not want to weaken the fabric.

I then rinsed the fabric in the cold water. At this point I could see some of the red colour coming out in the water.

Finally I saturated the fabric in the hydrogen peroxide, which I had mixed with a little water.

The circles clearly show up, though they are somewhat muted. I wanted the pattern to be quite subtle in the top, so I was happy with this result.









I then repeated the process with the fabric for the sleeves, which I tied differently. The result was very light stripes. I probably would have liked the colour change to show up a little more but we'll go with "subtle" again.

For the yoke front and back, I tried something different. I had a gel bleach which I applied directly to the fabric in a swirling design. I only left it on for a few minutes before rinsing with cold water and neutralizing. 

I washed and dried all the fabric pieces. Now they are ready to be made into a top!

Resources for Discharge Dyeing

Burch, Paula. (n.d.). How to tie dye on dark fabric. Retrieved from http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/FAQ/dark.shtml

Ericson, Lois. (2008). Dyeing with Bleach. Retrieved from http://www.threadsmagazine.com/item/3720/dyeing-with-bleach/page/all

Erin, Verena. (2013, November 1). Lemon juice bleach printing [Blog post] http://verenaerin.ca/lemon-juice-bleach-printing/

Up and Dyed. (2013, June 7). Discharging with household cleansers [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://upanddyed.wordpress.com/tag/reverse-tie-dye/


Suggestions for Students Learning




For a simple student project using a discharge technique, I chose to use black, 100% cotton fabric since it usually works well when discharging colour. I cut the fabric to the size of a gift bag, as I plan to use it for a basic sewing project for students after the discharging. I found some cookie cutters with interesting shapes and placed them where I wanted to add the design by discharging.













I put some bleach in a glass dish and added some paper towel to soak it up.

I then simply dipped the cookie cutters in the paper towel soaked with bleach and quickly stamped them on the black fabric. The results are immediate and dramatic, which would appeal to students, but also means you have to work quickly to avoid the first design stamped from bleaching too much. You could avoid this by just putting on one design, or perhaps diluting the bleach so it doesn't work so quickly. You need to immediately put the fabric in cold water to stop the bleaching.

I had originally planned to do this project with household cleansers as I think they might be more acceptable and safe for using with students. The test I did on a scrap of different fabric worked fine but it did not work well on this black fabric, so I changed to bleach. Lemon juice would be even better for classroom use but careful planning and testing would be needed to make sure it would work.





Another option is spraying, which is what I did on the sample here. I tied this piece with elastics first and then just sprayed it with a mixture of 1:1 bleach and water. This could be interesting, as depending on the time of year, you might be able to collect things like leaves to spray over with a bleach mixture.

Whatever method used, my goal is to have students create a design on the front of what will become a gift bag, using a discharge technique. They will sew the gift bag in another class and I will describe that in my next post!