_^14/10/2024

Blach as Fabric Dye

I’ve used bleach to dye fabric before with hand made stencils but the process was a bit hit and miss. So I decided to do a bit of thorough thinking. The problems with the previous attempts were:

• The bleach was too thick. Those gel-like bleaches are not good for this purpose. I was applying the bleach with a cotton swab and the gel was not spreading evenly, creating a blotchy effect.
• Creating a stencil was a bit of a hassle. I used a sheet of paper covered with a layer of painter’s tape and then cut the design out of it. The paper would get soggy and bleed the bleach, creating blurry edges.

So I decided:

1. Buy a liquid bleach, apply it with some tool.
2. Use the 3D printer to create a stencil.

Trial and Error, Mostly Error

Cotton swab results as a control group. The bleach was too thick and the swab was not spreading it evenly. The result was a blotchy mess. I bet you can’t even make out the design.

So I decided to use a fine mist spray bottle. Found a great use for the one that is for oil, came from Amazon and saw no use. :^)

As you can see, we have a new problem: uneven blobs of bleach. The spray was not fine enough and the bleach was not spreading evenly. Disregard the parts where it completely messed up the stencil, that was my fault. If you act cowardly and not spray with confidence, the bleach will pool up and create blobs. Lessen learned.

Okay, so we gotta get rid of the blobs. So a kind of a sieve would work right? Nope. I used a fan cover, mesh thingy I printed for my PC fans. Most of the mist caught on the mesh and most of the bleach did not reach the fabric and somehow we still got uneven droplets.

Well, if we spray enough, the bleach will spread evenly, right? Without applying too much bleach, we cannot get rid of the uneven blobs. If you saturate it enough to spread evenly, you will get a result like below. Not bad but not what I was going for.

If we spray it at an angle, maybe the big droplets will fall to the ground and the mist will reach the fabric. Kinda worked, if you ignore the megablobs.

At this point, I was struggling with this for a good 2 to 3 days. Desperation was setting in. I decided it was a good idea to aerosolize the bleach. I’m just glad I didn’t win a Darwin award for this year. What was I thinking? Not that spraying bleach with a spray bottle was a good idea but this was a whole new level of stupidity.

DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES.

I put the bleach into a room humidifier and turned it on. To my surprise, it worked really well. The mist was fine and the bleach was spreading evenly. The only problem (apart from the health hazard) was that the mist was too fine and the bleach was not absorbing into the fabric. I had to wait a lot longer for the bleach to do its thing. With a bit more tinkering, I think this could be a viable solution. But I’m not going to try it again.

Conclusion

So, combining the best parts of the previous attempts, spraying at an angle to a mesh sieve, I got the best result. After applying different amount of coats, I got the desired effect. I really liked the old, rusty look of the bleach on the fabric, the cotton swab was not able to achieve this.

Judging by the crisp edges of the result, I think we can achieve great detail with the 3D printed stencil. Color control is a bit of a problem for now though.