sometimes , not always, it pays to be bored

After all that weaving activity the inevitable crash down and bored syndrome kicked in. Being totally uninspired i took on menial tasks such as ironing and trying to organize chaos, but that was no help for boredom. On the contrary it aggravated it.
i was working on the contents of a drawer and found this gingham material that i had been shuffling around because i really hated it as it was a poly cotton blend. Being a fiber snob i had worked a bit with it mainly using it as a base for needlefelting and that's how far it had gone.

Nothing to lose here and as i've found that's really liberating. i also had a batch of pigment i had mixed with Golden Soft Gel Medium and GAC 900. Noticed the frequency of hot pink in my work lately?

i started mindlessly dabbing the pigment on the hated gingham and to speed up drying i used the heat gun. i knew the poly would react to the heat, but what i found was that where there was pigment it acted as a resist.
Was it actually the pigment?

Control experiment showed that it was not the pigment, but the gel. Hope you can see the effect in the above photo. It was printed in a twill pattern:) using a square sponge stamp and soft gel medium.

What i've found:

• contrary to common advice waggling the heat gun gives more control
  
• zapping from a grater distance than usual prevents scorching the fabric
• i've only tested a poly cotton blend other fabrics need to be tested to see
  
• if the process works
• color can be added to the gel medium thus getting a two for one effect
• speculating here- perhaps using a thicker gel might give a clearer resist .

If you take from here and experiment further please report. i'd really appreciate it.

i think this qualifies for April TIF don't you? :) Can you list all the changes?

neki desu