Soy Wax Discharge

Okay, this is probably my new favorite thing to do -- soy wax discharge! The only time I did soy wax batik was nearly 2 years ago and I've been anxious to get back into it (where does the time go?). I hadn't done batik discharge before, though, so I started off with that today.

The first three of these pieces were commercial black fabric. The one on top was discharged with bleach. First I tried bleach gel -- which I've never had great results with -- but it was discharging too slowly for me...so I mixed up some 50/50 bleach and water and brushed it on. Ten minutes later, this is what it looked like!

The second piece was discharged with thiox paste, which I've been wanting to try. I used a paste made of 1 tsp soda ash (dissolved in a small amount of very hot water), 1 tsp thiox, and 1/2 cup of alginate print paste. Brushed that all over the waxed piece, when ironed between sheets of newspaper. I wasn't real happy with the amount of discharge, so I increased the thiox to 2 tsp, plus added some water to aid in the painting, then discharged and ironed out the piece below.

Much more to my liking!

This last discharged piece was done with the same formula as the one just above, but I used a piece of muslin that had been shiboried and overdyed at least once. You can see what I started with today if you look at the dark areas, which are a honeycomb pattern originally created by shiboriing the fabric on a rope. The piece looked rather hopeless to me -- way too dark, and on the way to the dust bin before today's save.

This is the last piece of fabric with potato dextrin on it, after 2 days drying. It'll get painted or dyed and batched tomorrow.

So, all in a day's work -- a morning's work actually...I spent the afternoon resting again. Next up, some soy wax batik with paint or dye. Stay tuned!