Sugar Resist Tutorial and Fabric Giveaway

I’m excited to be a guest on the blog today. Thank you to the “Fire” crew for inviting me and for focusing on resist techniques this month! I’ll be giving away a sample set of resist-dyed fabrics.  Details on how to enter and a photo of the samples appear at the end of this post.

Before the “sweet” talk begins, I have to do a little bit of resist evangelizing. Working with resists is kind of like magic. After applying the resist and then the dye or paint, you end up with a stiff, ugly, strange-looking piece of fabric. You have no idea what the final piece will look like. Then, once you wash off the resist and excess dye, the pattern appears, seemingly out of thin air!  

I fell in love with resists about eight years ago. A friend invited me over for a play day in her garage.  We experimented with flour paste, potato and corn dextrin and soy wax.  I wasn’t impressed until I washed out my fabrics at home.  The fabrics I created that day were beautiful.  They had so much depth and texture.

After that initiation, I started experimenting. Over the past eight years, I’ve tried most of the commercially available products and just about anything available from the grocery store that forms a paste. One of my favorites – sugar – is the subject of today’s tutorial A lot of people are avoiding sugar these days, but here is a low calorie way to enjoy it.  The only weight you’ll add is to your fabric stash!

Resists are usually allowed to dry before you apply the paint or dye because they can more easily breach the resist while it is wet. Sugar syrup works very well for wet-on-wet techniques.  Part of the appeal is the way the dyes mix and mingle with the syrup. It creates soft edges as the dye/paint blends with the syrup. Plus, sugar syrup is available in the grocery store – no waiting for your internet order to arrive!

 

 

Below is an overview of the process. Download the pdf tutorial for more detailed information.

Sugar syrup is easy to mix by heating equal parts confectioner’s sugar and water on top of the stove. I like to let it cool a bit before using – it becomes thicker as it cools.

There are lots of ways to apply it.  You can drip it from a spoon or syringe.  You can drizzle it over the entire cloth, then spread it with a notched spreader.  You can use a found object stencil and brush the syrup through the openings. Whichever method you choose, make sure to leave some areas of the cloth without any resist.  Part of the effect is the way the dye spreads on the fabric and how it reacts when it reaches an area with the resist.

Sugar syrup dripped from a spoon

Sugar syrup applied with kitchen scrubber

Sugar syrup applied with notched spreader

Dyes or paints are applied with an eye dropper while the sugar syrup is still wet. Apply the color to the white areas of the fabric and on top of the sugar syrup. The liquid dye interacts with the liquid syrup and moves and changes.

 

Once the fabric is dry, or almost dry, it can be washed. (See the tutorial for a note on using dyes vs. fabric paints.) Don’t let the cloth dry completely before removing it from your work surface – the syrup acts like glue! The syrup washes out easily in warm water. 

I usually work with dyes rather than paints, but I'd like to show you a sample I did recently with fabric paint.  I generally suggest Dye-Na-Flow, a very thin paint that is the consistency of dye.  I was out of Dye-Na-Flow, so I used Pro Chemical's ProFab paint thinned with their paint thinner. 

Here is the right side of the fabric.

Now, look at the wrong side.  Notice the wonderful rivulets that appear in the paint.

Now, on to the fabric giveaway! The resist-dyed sample set includes 7 pieces of cloth, totaling about 1 yard of fabric.  

 The set includes cotton, silk noil, rayon and silk/cotton.   If you would like to enter the drawing, leave a comment on this blog post. The winner will be drawn at random from those who leave a comment by August 6.