Discharge dyeing: husbands and bleach don’t mix

I was going to title this post: My husband is an idiot! ** but he caught me and threatened to leave nasty comments here as ‘right of reply’ so…..

I came home to find the washing hung out on the line and the kitchen looking remarkably tidy. When I thanked him he said ‘I was looking around and I realised most of the mess in the kitchen was mine, so I thought I’d better clean it up’. After picking myself up off from the floor from the shock this never before expressed domestic insight I discovered the real reason for his burst of domesticity: GUILT!!!

He then proceeds to tell me he got some bleach on the tea cosy I made a few years ago; ‘but it doesn’t look that bad…it’s quite an interesting effect really’. Really. This is what I discovered:

L to R: Front, back and lining and what it looked like after I realised his idea of ‘it’s not so bad’, and mine are different! When I was taking it apart, rescuing buttons etc I showed him how much the fabric had bleached from sitting in the sun on the kitchen bench (the fabric behind the buttons was much darker), and he said ’so it was pretty much wrecked anyway’ then scurried away before I could hit him.

All the bits of fabric are sitting in bleach so the rest of the colour can leach out. I was interested in the way the colour bleached out but the outlines remained, so I am planning to do a bit of an experiment with the fabric and colouring it with Inktense pencils, watercolour pencils, etc and fabric medium. I’ll see what works and what doesn’t, and post the results. So it wasn’t a total loss…and the kitchen did look very nice….

** He isn’t an idiot and I do love him, but really…….