Weird.

Fun With Bleach, part 1:


Red fabric, tied with rubber bands. I expected to get red circles surrounded by a paler ground--like tie-dye, only reverse. I poured liquid bleach over the whole mess, stirred it around a little bit until I liked the color on the exposed bits, rinsed it with tap water, and then put it in a solution of approx 1 gal water and approx 1 oz anti-chlor (bottle said 1 tsp would remove chlorine from 10 gal of water...I have no idea how much anti-chlor I actually needed) and let it sit there for an hour or so before I removed the rubber bands.


Here's what I actually got: pale circles surrounded by a darker ground. A couple of red splotches, but you'd never know this fabric was bleached just from looking at it.

Theory: liquid bleach got under the rubber bands, but the anti-chlor didn't, allowing the bleach to work longer under the ties than it did on the exposed fabric. I soaked the untied fabric in anti-chlor solution, just in case.

It's kind of a creepy melon color, not the pale pink I got on the test strip, but I used a pen with thickened bleach for the test, so that result didn't surprise me.