Discharge printing - bleaching fabric

My friend, Leslie White, decided that she wanted to try this really awesome technique of reverse dyeing T-shirts and took me along for the ride.  It was amazing fun.  I think I'm addicted to it, really.  I can't wait to get some more T-shirts to try it out on.

First attempt, with stencil.

In any case, you can google "bleach dyeing", "reverse dyeing", "bleach galaxy how to" etc and end up with a ton of results. Some great tutorials, etc.  This is just a quick "hey, this is what I did" accounting.

We started with a couple of cheap T-shirts from Target, medium thickness, etc. It was actually more challenging than expected to find some that were of a decent thickness, and we ended up going with some undershirts that came 2 for $11, just in case these bit the dust.  Leslie had found a ribcage stencil that we used to do the first shirt.  She had decided to do a front and a back on her shirt, and I was just going to do a front.  So she started first.





We actually had a fairly technical method worked out at her house.  We wrapped a cardboard insert in plastic, so the bleach wouldn't bleed through. That worked very well.  I ended up stretching the shirt over just this insert and taping it at the back.  I didn't like that as much.  It made a sharp line where the splatters stopped.

Then we pinned the stencil to the cardboard with basic pushpin tacks.  Leslie had spent some time cutting out the stencil with an exacto knife, so we had both a positive and negative relief of the stencil.  She also covered it with clear packing tape to make it waterproof.

A tip: tape beyond just the stencil, or the bleach will bleed through and make unintentional shapes.  Or use a more waterproof material for your stencil.

Another tip: a paper stencil with pins works very well for one application of bleach.  After that, the pin holes start to enlarge and may let bleach through the stencil in unexpected areas.

Leslie and I used her shower to contain any splatters.  It worked pretty well and wasn't hard to maneuver in there.  But it does splatter. Not so much on us, actually, but on the area around the shirts.

 The back of Leslie's shirt turned out fantastic.  You can see the small triangle where the bleach had started to bleed through.  Otherwise, it was a very sharp relief.  I think a combination of stronger bleach mix (we mixed it 1:7 with water, but I think she ended up with a little more of it in her application) so she didn't spray as much and being the first one to use the stencil helped out.

Check out her post to see how her shirt turned out.  It's pretty freaking awesome.

The shirt I did, I ended up soaking too much.  You can see the wet outline on the fabric.  I think this made the bleach bleed more once we upped the concentration.  Not a bad thing, and I kind of like the look.  I ended up adding more splatters to it as well.

After I got home, I ended up using some fabric dye to 'erase' some of the lines that I didn't like.  Those that were made because we skimped on the waterproofing to some extent, and because I went crazy with the spray.  I also blended that hard line of spray ending that I talked about back into the black of the shirt. I'm digging it.


I did a second shirt with a cat relief that I love, but I'll talk about that in the next post.