Learn to Love Bleach

I often use bleach to expand my fabric stash, and I’ll show you why! Here is a quilt I am working on right now. I am not sure where this is going, but I love the teal/aqua fabrics and I need MORE!

When you soak fabric in bleach, it is difficult to guess how your fabric will turn out. Which colours will fade, which will disappear, and which won’t change at all. (Isn’t it strange that if I get a drop of toothpaste on my clothes while brushing my teeth it ALWAYS leaves bleach spots.)

NOTE: Remember to wear gloves, and pre-wet the fabric.

Here is a set of fabrics I recently bleached, to fit into this quilt somewhere… I first sample is unbleached, followed by the bleached sample. I usually dilute my bleach 1:20, and keep checking for colour changes. I’d guess I usually leave them in the bleach for about 1/2 hour, then rinse a LOT, and tumble dry.

My very first blog posts were about using bleach(in 2011!!!), inspired by an article by Malka Dubrawsky. Thanks goodness fabric doesn’t go off… I still have all three of these fabrics in my orange stash!

And I made a table runner with a lot of my bleached and unbleached oranges…