…bleach printing on fabric…

With quilt camp coming up (two weeks to go!), I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what to give for gifts, and I will confess, it has been harder than in previous years. In the way that life goes, we are all getting increasingly busier, with less time for crafting and other hobbies, which precludes some of the obvious choices of previous years. I’ve generally had ideas for each of the ladies to work with. This year…nothing. Then a couple of days ago I came across an excellent idea, and got to planning, only to realise that the fabric alone was going to cost upwards of $25 per person (for a gift supposedly limited to $5!). And that was without factoring in the slightly minor detail that I was struggling to find funky, modern fabrics, in the colours that I needed.

Generally speaking, I’m not a stasher. I tend not to keep piles and piles of cute fabric on hand, because chances are I will get bored of them before I can use them…or I will swing completely the other way and not use them for fear of “wasting” them on less than ideal projects! My local choices are also very restricted, with not a lot of modern options available. What I do have access too, though, are solids and a healthy sense of adevnture when it comes to trying new crafty things. Eventually, I settled on bleach printing.

A good, easy idea in theory. In practice though, not overly successful. The dark grey I tested on didn’t really bleach out much, and the pale grey bleached well…into a delightful shade of bright lavender purple, that has since faded to peach. Sigh. I will have to do some more reading and planning before attempting this again.

So there went that idea, and with it my plan A of camp gifts. It was going to be ok, though, I had a plan B, not perfect, but workable, until Plan C hit me this morning and I used the kids craft time to hit up ye olde online shopping. Now…I wait. And in the mean time, start packing. There’s only two weeks left and I’m going for four whole days, so I definitely need to start right away if I have any chance of being ready!