More Resists: Rice and AP Flours

Or:  Further Adventures in Robbing the Pantry

This time, I was inspired by my friend, Karen, at RabbitsEatQuilts.  She has been playing with flour resists and I really liked her results.  So I decided to try it myself.

I mixed up some cheap all-purpose flour with water -- a 1:1 ratio.  That is, one cup flour to one cup cold water. I whisked it together, and using my putty scraper, I  put a thin layer on my fabric.  I let it dry and then painted over it with thickened dye.  Batched it overnight and then soaked it in a bucket of cold water for a couple of hours before I washed and dried it as usual.

I really like the pattern of the cracks -- the squiggly lines were done with a chopstick in the wet paste.


I should have used more dye in the thickener so that the whole thing was darker.

Like this.  The lines on this were made with a plastic fork in the wet paste.  I used a lot more dye when I mixed up the paste and got way better color.

I also tried some rice flour.  When I was at the store buying cheap AP flour (not the stuff I usually bake with), I strolled through the Asian section and found a bag of rice flour.  I thought, "why not?"  The first batch I mixed up was the same ratio as the AP (wheat) flour.  It was too runny, so I dumped in some more of the rice flour until it was a spreadable consistency.

I like the crackled pattern better with the rice flour.  But the second time I mixed it, I had trouble getting the right consistency -- I'll have to experiment some more with that.  It doesn't spread as easily as the wheat flour paste and when I drew in it with a chopstick or fork, it tended to get lumps and globs.  Much more than the wheat flour.

Again, I like it better with the more intense color, but the marks from the fork aren't as graceful as in the flour piece -- because the fork kept sticking in the paste.

Bottom line:  I like these flour resists much better than the potato stuff.  No cooking, quick mix-up, and, best of all, it rinses out of the fabric easily.  They dry a lot quicker too.  I did soak the fabric in a bucket of cold water for a couple of hours, but there was not the gooey mess that the potato left.  Also, this time of year I have to work in the house, so no nasty potato smell is a real bonus.

I had some thickened dye left over, so I set some fabric on a piece of bubble wrap and brushed it on.