Woes of cosplay
Jun. 23rd, 2007 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spoon9001I (magically) was appointed to make the Die Scherben armbands for Ari and I to cosplay as our characters, Yuta and Haydn. For reference on construction, I spent the majority of ALA3 sewing the Large pieces of swastika and stripe onto the things. Never mind the tiny pieces. And then I realized that I had attached the red stripes too low, as I had "cut" the armbands with the intent of seam allowance, and so I had to re-do that part, and even so, the original red cloth used did not bleach. At all. So, I found new red cloth, and made the strips again.
So, I'd say 40 hours later, the armbands are done being assembled. Well, next is the bleaching.
"The bleaching," you say? Yes, the bleaching. The idea was to give it all a used feel. Well, seeing as I had spent 40 hours cutting and stitching, I wanted to make a test first. And also, I had to do a little research.
Apparently, BLACK COTTON does not always have the same results when bleached; it all depends on which dyes were used to make black. Well, fortunately, the black I used was made with reds. Yay. That went well. Diluting bleach gets different effects, in terms of extremity and speed. That's useful.
According to person A, Bleach directly applied to white cotton will result in yellow stains. According to person B, my mom, simply letting the iron sit on the white cotton will result in burn stains, which are the same color. WELL. Neither are correct, according to my test pieces. Combine the two, though, and you get marvelous results. Effectively, you're burning the bleach. It's kinda cool.
Further research taught me that the best way to neutralize bleach, so that it stops what it's doing when you're ready for it to stop, is to use White Vinegar. Hey, how about that? We have a shit-load of that in the house because it works great on soap scum (I'm not kidding, either; we clean our showerheads with it). Okay, so the trick is to bleach your fabric, and dunk it in the vinegar to stop it, and then rinse it. Okay. So, I have a bowl of vinegar ready.
Ari came over today so that we could bleach the things together. So, we're in the laundry room, with the window open, standing over the large basin that is the sink. With the eye dropper, I apply a 60/40 bleach/water mix, and watch the liquid bleed and spread throughout the cotton. It works very quickly with the black, a little slower on the red. No biggie. I want more effect on the black, anyway. After a few minutes, I decide that the black has gone along enough, so I apply the vinegar in small drops.
GUESS WHAT?
The shit didn't neutralize the bleach; it ENHANCED IT! As in, put it into BLEACH OVERDRIVE. Talk about an "oh, shit!" moment. Well, fortunately, the effect it was having was good enough for what we wanted, so I (MUCH MORE conservatively) did the same thing to the other armband, monitering it much more closely. Inhaling the wonderful fumes.
Now.
Bleach isn't too bad in a ventilated area. Vinegar is pungeant, but tolerable. COMBINE the two fuckers in the same container, however, and it's almost caustic. These are things that the websites DIDN'T tell me, so I'm telling you. I had trouble breathing at some point.
EDIT: After doing more research just now, apparently you're not supposed to mix Vinegar and bleach for this very reason. But whatever you do, do NOT mix Bleach and Ammonia. That one can and will kill.
Anyway. Rinsed the the armbands in water and Clorox bleach for colors to get rid of the chemicals, and let the things drip-dry. After that it was off to the ironing board. It took about ten minutes of reapplying bleach and vinegar (in TINY amounts <3) and waiting for things to dry, but we got some nice stains.
When that was all said and done to our satisfaction, we agreed that adding some color back into the over-cooked spots was in order, so we used a red and a black fabric pen for that; after the drying, I'll re bleach those spots so that it doesn't... look like we used a pen. XD
Over all, I'm please with the results, and I had fun with this learning experience, as nothing really went wrong. Amazingly enough, I didn't panic when we discovered that Vinegar and Bleach nearly explode when mixed together. :D
So, I'd say 40 hours later, the armbands are done being assembled. Well, next is the bleaching.
"The bleaching," you say? Yes, the bleaching. The idea was to give it all a used feel. Well, seeing as I had spent 40 hours cutting and stitching, I wanted to make a test first. And also, I had to do a little research.
Apparently, BLACK COTTON does not always have the same results when bleached; it all depends on which dyes were used to make black. Well, fortunately, the black I used was made with reds. Yay. That went well. Diluting bleach gets different effects, in terms of extremity and speed. That's useful.
According to person A, Bleach directly applied to white cotton will result in yellow stains. According to person B, my mom, simply letting the iron sit on the white cotton will result in burn stains, which are the same color. WELL. Neither are correct, according to my test pieces. Combine the two, though, and you get marvelous results. Effectively, you're burning the bleach. It's kinda cool.
Further research taught me that the best way to neutralize bleach, so that it stops what it's doing when you're ready for it to stop, is to use White Vinegar. Hey, how about that? We have a shit-load of that in the house because it works great on soap scum (I'm not kidding, either; we clean our showerheads with it). Okay, so the trick is to bleach your fabric, and dunk it in the vinegar to stop it, and then rinse it. Okay. So, I have a bowl of vinegar ready.
Ari came over today so that we could bleach the things together. So, we're in the laundry room, with the window open, standing over the large basin that is the sink. With the eye dropper, I apply a 60/40 bleach/water mix, and watch the liquid bleed and spread throughout the cotton. It works very quickly with the black, a little slower on the red. No biggie. I want more effect on the black, anyway. After a few minutes, I decide that the black has gone along enough, so I apply the vinegar in small drops.
GUESS WHAT?
The shit didn't neutralize the bleach; it ENHANCED IT! As in, put it into BLEACH OVERDRIVE. Talk about an "oh, shit!" moment. Well, fortunately, the effect it was having was good enough for what we wanted, so I (MUCH MORE conservatively) did the same thing to the other armband, monitering it much more closely. Inhaling the wonderful fumes.
Now.
Bleach isn't too bad in a ventilated area. Vinegar is pungeant, but tolerable. COMBINE the two fuckers in the same container, however, and it's almost caustic. These are things that the websites DIDN'T tell me, so I'm telling you. I had trouble breathing at some point.
EDIT: After doing more research just now, apparently you're not supposed to mix Vinegar and bleach for this very reason. But whatever you do, do NOT mix Bleach and Ammonia. That one can and will kill.
Anyway. Rinsed the the armbands in water and Clorox bleach for colors to get rid of the chemicals, and let the things drip-dry. After that it was off to the ironing board. It took about ten minutes of reapplying bleach and vinegar (in TINY amounts <3) and waiting for things to dry, but we got some nice stains.
When that was all said and done to our satisfaction, we agreed that adding some color back into the over-cooked spots was in order, so we used a red and a black fabric pen for that; after the drying, I'll re bleach those spots so that it doesn't... look like we used a pen. XD
Over all, I'm please with the results, and I had fun with this learning experience, as nothing really went wrong. Amazingly enough, I didn't panic when we discovered that Vinegar and Bleach nearly explode when mixed together. :D
