—Actually, to be honest, they might've cost as much as .75, or even a dollar-fifty—but at any rate, because the straight seam in the back had mostly come undone, leaving only serged one left, they were cheap, even by resale shop standards.

pants: overdyed, discharged & dyed with stamps, and finally decorated with squirted dye thickened with seaweed.

If I'm recalling events of late last summer or early fall correctly, I started by by overdying the pants green; then used stamps and bleach (thickened?) to discharge; then overdyed with turquoise and finally used thickened purple in a squirt bottle to add the curliQs. N.b. that I used one of my fave stamps, the rose one, both for discharging and dying.

One of the aspects about discharging that I really appreciate, besides its instant gratification ("immediacy" is the artsy-fartsy term, and it is shorter, at least) is seeing what the fabric discharges to—in this case, the grey gave way to an off-white with a slightly pink cast. I wouldn't’ve predicted, and certainly wasn't aiming for, a combination of light warm grey, sage green, charcoal and pinkish cream, but I think it works together beautifully.

back side.

So I was pretty happy with the way these came out, and as a bonus the resale shop where I purchased them had a celadon green long sleeved T and also cotton sweater that match. Now if only I hadn't gotten grease all over the sweater—oh well, guess it's headed to the dyebath next.

photograph, 19apr09; file started 19, completed 20apr09.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.