Fantasy Rag Quilt w/bleach stencil blocks

[TracyInNH]

Love the bleach pen idea... I'm hooked on making denim quilts, but didn't want to get into spraying bleach on it all!  Gettin a gel pen later today, but do you just wash it after you get the white color you want?  Hand wash?  I'm kinda clueless - I could just picture me doing all that and have it bleed everywhere when I wash it lol.

[Kimby.]

Love the bleach pen idea... I'm hooked on making denim quilts, but didn't want to get into spraying bleach on it all!  Gettin a gel pen later today, but do you just wash it after you get the white color you want?  Hand wash?  I'm kinda clueless - I could just picture me doing all that and have it bleed everywhere when I wash it lol.

You have to either rinse or wash the bleach out of the individual blocks when you get the fade you are happiest with. Otherwise the bleach will eat into the fabric and create holes.

Because I was working with individual squares of fabric, I rinsed each block really well in cold water and hand washed them with dish detergent in the kitchen sink. Then I hung each to dry outside. You could also use your clothes dryer, but because I was making a rag quilt, I didn't want to beat on the denim any more than I had to before I sewed everything together. If you'll be using bigger squares, you could wash the denim in your washing machine, no problem. You'll just have lots of fraying to trim off.

Experiment with scraps of your denim to determine how long to keep the bleach on. I found that thicker repurposed denim bleached with crisper edges and the thin denim turned a bit fuzzy and bled. I found leaving the bleach gel on for 30 minutes did the trick for me.

And a tip ... if you're going to hand wash like I did, use a good pair of rubber gloves because the bleach will just eat into your skin. I figured this out after, oh, I don't know, 20 blocks or so.   

[Diesels_Mom]

OMG I love it!

[ofenjen]

fantastic use of bleach on a quilt...I really love it!

*this rocks*

[sactownsue]

Wow ! Thanks for the bleaching tips. I made a T-shirt once with the gel pens and it was fun. Not as lovely as your quilt tho.
Beautiful.

[ladyk]

Wow this is really good, I cut and save random squares from old t-shirts and things with the intention to make my own quilt out of them one day but I'm not really familiar with quilting or any sort of advanced sewing techniques, mainly just what I learned from home ec! It would be cool to see a tutorial for a piece like this, but also I saw your bleach stencil and it intrigued me because I never thought of using that before! I'm not sure if you already said it but what did you use as your stencil, Freezer paper? Also i was thinking you may find a happy medium between the gel and the liquid and sort of create a mixture of equal parts and use sponge brushes to control the bleeding. I dunno, just seems like it would work, although it would bleach the brush of course but no biggie. anyway nice work!

[RockDragon]

Gorgeous all together, and the stenciled blocks are great!  The designs are really crisp and simple enough that they're easy to see, but not overly simplistic.  Awesome job!!  *adds cool denim bleach stencil idea to the list of things to do*   

[seechelle417]

Absolutely gorgeous