I’ve been working on a talk for the Indiana SAQA group on resists. I had it all finished, and then I ran across an article about rice flour which I’ve never tried, so I had to stop and play.
We don’t keep rice flour on hand, but we have a flour mill since Dave makes most of our bread and grinds the grain into flour. So he ground up some rice for me.
I added water to the rice flour, making the consistency as thin as possible.
Unlike flour paste, it is hard to spread it on the fabric. I kept watering it down until I finally just poured it on. I tried to spread it but it just wouldn’t spread.
So I thinned it more and spread it with my hands.
Now to let it dry.
It takes several days to dry. When it finally is dry it looks like a desert. Unlike flour resist where you have to crack it, rice paste cracks on its own.
That cool! However, adding paint was difficult. To help with the process, I watered down the textile paint. As I added the paint, pieces of the rice flour still would come up.
Here it is finally painted. Now to let it dry.
Unlike flour resist, rice flour is real easy to just scrap off once the paint is dry.
Since the fabric was still a little damp, I let it dry and then ironed on the wrong side to set the paint. Then I handwashed, dried, and ironed it.
Here is the finished piece.
Here is a piece using a stencil.
So what do I think about this resist?
Here are some of the negatives:
- It’s hard to spread on the fabric.
- It takes a long time to dry – a day longer than flour paste.
- It stinks when drying.
- It’s hard to paint. If you use a real thin paint like Dye-na-Flow it will just seep under the paste and the design will be gone.
And the positives:
- It’s easy to remove. It just flakes off.
- It creates an interesting design.
- Using it with stencils creates a lot of interest.
Is it worth playing with? Of course. Is it something I want to do if I’m looking to quickly make some interesting resist fabric? Probably not. But I must say, I only played with it for two sessions. Maybe there is a trick I don’t know about. I do love the cracks on the stencil fabric. I could see doing much more fabric with this rice flour and stencils.
That finished fabric piece reminded me of Dendritic mono printing, which is much easier to create. Here is my tutorial on it.
Have you ever tried rice flour resist? I’d love to hear what you think about it. If you have any tips, I’d love to read them. Thanks for dropping by.
I tried it several years ago as a resist, but I used the paste in a very thin mix using an icing bag to draw out my patterns, and it worked quite well. Perhaps thinning the paste might make it more easy to spread? I used a large metal icing spatula to spread it over a flat surface. It was a bit fiddly, but worked.
I love your experiments and have tried some of them. The inspiration is priceless.
Suz, I’ll have to try that icing bag trick. I saw that on a post but don’t have one around. I did thin it down but it still was difficult. Guess I need to thin it more! Thanks for the tip.
Thank you for your kind words. I appreciate you saying that. I hope at least a few of my posts are inspirational!!
What a beautiful result. I remember my very talented and elderly Aunt doing this process with me to dye her summer curtains. Happy memories.
Kathy, Thanks! Wow! That would be some interesting curtains, and I’m sure great memories. So glad you have those!
Thank you for experimenting! I have wondered about rice flour, but put trying it way down on the list of things to try. I wonder what would happen if you did a rice + ??? blend. Thanks again!
I love it when you experiment and take us through the process. I have only tried regular flour resist, with great results. I wonder how well the rice resist would work with ice dyeing.
If you don’t have a piping bag, a trick is to cut the bottom corner off of a freezer bag. Instant piping bag in a pinch.
I’ve been wanting to try rice flour resist but the one I was thinking of is made with both rice flour and rice bran – it’s mixed with a couple of other ingredients, cooked, made into balls and steamed. The balls are then made into the paste. It’s call Katazome- a traditional Shibori technique. I have everything to try this except for the rice bran. They add soda ash to the rice paste and sometimes even dye- often used to apply colored designs with a stencil,
Have you thought about using a narrow tipped bottle- like for cake decorating to apply it? I’m also wondering why you didn’t use fiber reactive dye- thickened with sodium alginate to dye the fabric? You can add the soda ash water to your thickened dye.
Kim, I’ve heard of Katazome but I had no idea it involved extra ingredients and cooking! I am working on this resist lecture which is an intro to resist and wanted to use fabric paint since a lot of people don’t want to or aren’t familiar with dyeing. If you check out my tutorials I’ve done some resists with thickened dyes which I love, love, love! I think the idea of a narrow tipped bottle would be great if I want to write on the fabric. Thanks for explaining Katazome and dropping by!
KJ, Thank you! I don’t know. You would have to set the fabric in the container after adding the resist and letting it dry. Then ice dyeing over it. I’m thinking because of all of the liquid, it would seep under the rice paste and you wouldn’t end up with much of a design. I’ve ice dyed with other resists including soy, but never any of the flours. I think it would work real good with the regular flour paste. Thanks for that great tip about the pipping bag! I’ll have to use that! Thanks again.
Jeannie, Don’t do that!! Don’t you make me have to try something else!!!! Really, it’s a great idea. I really like flour, but maybe mixing them together I might like even better! Thanks.