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​Welcome to my textile blog. My name is Becky; I am a wax-and-dye batiker, including in Indonesia.  Here are some experiments I’ve been doing lately.
I’ve decided to try buying a T-shirt in a background color I like and making a “batik” design by discharging with bleach gel.  All the photos in this slideshow are of store bought colored cotton shirts that I bleached.  Some were painted with Speedball™ screen printing ink after the bleaching process.

Cascade™ Gel
I found out about using Cascade™ dishwasher gel to bleach cotton on Google. As soon as I read about it, I remembered the mysterious bleach stains on the sleeve of my cotton sweater.  The bleach stains were from the bleachy-smelling Cascade™ gel I put in my dishwasher!
This gel only removes color from cotton fabric.  It will damage rayon or linen, and it has no effect on silk or synthetics.  Be sure to test the gel a day in advance to avoid disappointment about the fiber content, because fiber content labels are not always reliable.

Speedball™ Screen Printing Ink 
I’ve repurposed Speedball™ screen printing ink to hand paint on textiles.  I find this excellent, water soluble textile ink to be extremely safe and inert. It is odorless and cleans up with water.  I’ve used it for decades with no adverse effects.  It has to be heat-set to become permanent, so I air dry it and then toss it in clothes dryer for about an hour.

Careful With That Bleach Gel!
The bleach gel, on the other hand, really smells and the first couple times I used it without ventilation I felt sick for a day or so.  It has a powerful bleach smell so use it outdoors or with good ventilation.
But the consistency is perfect for “batiking.”  Loaded into a squeeze bottle it’s just as runny and fluid as hot wax, and gives a very batik-looking line. 

It can also be applied with a brush to cover large areas or for dry brush effects.  But never use a cellulose-based sponge brush, the bleach will dissolve it.

Like batik wax, the result is a light line on a dark background. The tricky thing about it is, it does not dry quickly like wax.
After applying the gel, lie project  flat to process or it will run.  To rinse the gel out, carefully slide it into a washer of hot water to keep the bleach gel from touching unwanted areas of your project.
On the left, a floral design on which the gel ran (upside down!) because it was hung to dry.  On the right, there are white smudges where the bleach touched unwanted areas of the background.

The bleach is actively bleaching or discharging for about an hour.  After an hour it can still accidentally bleach unwanted areas of your project or your own clothes, but it has done all the work it can where it was applied. 
Exposure to the air decreases the strength of the gel.  It also becomes weak if stored in a small container, such as a squeeze bottle.  Always test the bleach and material you plan to use shortly before use, to predict your results. 
You may need to get a fresh bottle of bleach gel if a small test patch does not bleach well.
Different lengths of exposure to the bleach gel give different shades of discharge color:
On the left 3 exposures timed at 20 minute intervals: 1 hour (for brightest white), 40 minutes and 20 minutes exposure.
On the right, about an hour exposure(for the dolphins) and about 20 minutes(for the water). 

Stamping with Bleach Gel
The gel is thick enough to be stamped onto cotton material with large handmade rubber stamps:
But the bleach gel will erode any stamp made of cellulose, such as household sponges.

Most T-shirt colors bleach toward white, but some yield a lovely gold or pink color.  Heather tee shirts, which are 50-50 cotton-polyester, can make a nice bleach design.  The cover picture on this blog was on a dark heather tee shirt.
Test the bleach gel in an inconspicuous spot and wash and dry your T-shirt in advance to be sure what color will come out!

I experimented with “resisting” the bleach using a paste of flour and water in a squeeze bottle with these results.  The flour paste protected the darker areas from the bleach gel.

Textile Painting
I’ve already shown a couple of examples of painting with the Speedball™ ink, on the cover page of this blog, and the black-eyed Susan flower above. Here’s a TABLE NAPKIN that was bleached and then painted.  On the left the bleach is still wet and processing, and on the right it has been painted with speed ball textile ink.  The variations in ink color come from the thickness of the bleach gel.
You should wash out the gel and dry the fabric before applying the screen printing ink.

Thank you for watching and I hope you enjoyed learning about these original experiments with my discharge and painting process using household Cascade™ dishwasher gel and Speedball™ textile ink.