shibori fabric discharging and painting

I'd like to confess that I sometimes, OK, at least once a week, meet friends at Tim's, a local coffee shop. It does feel somehow naughty, like I should be doing something productive instead, but on days when I feel down and not likely to be very creative anyway, the girl chat gives me a boost. Thanks Donna and Anne!
I came home made lunch for Gord, went for a nice walk, and then got creative.
 I've had a picture in my mind of a stand of new growth birch trees which I wanted to try to produce again using the shibori wrapped fabric on the tin can method. Oops, sorry I forgot to take a picture while it was on the can, I got excited! Basically, you wrap a piece of fabric the circumference of the can with string, continuing to the top; scrunch it down the can, wrap some more and so on until all the fabric is all on the tin can. Then I paint the folds that are created with 2 parts discharge paste, 1 part paint.

I take them off right away, cover my iron pad with protective cloths both under and over and iron with steam. It's important to be well ventilated. I love the first piece. It may not show perfectly in the picture, but the greys are beautiful and there is yellow in the background fabric which really looks like rays of sunlight. I have plans for this piece. I see it with gold leaves and lots of foreground shrubbery, both machine and hand stitched.
The second piece is on a lighter fabric. I tried it once with the birch trees and it didn't really work, so I thought darker ones would. It turned out pretty well too.

This is what my table looked like this morning. I was playing with tulip sketching again  last night.

Also, I've picked out fabrics for a more girly improv quilt like the last one. I may add some greens into it but here's my array of pink and orange.

And finally, here's a failure. I thought I might like to add some green using the discharge paste on the tulip piece I've already started stitching, so I thought it best to try it on a another sample. That was a good thing. A smaller sample would have been even better! I got mixed up which green I had used before. This was obviously the wrong one. Someday, I may find a way to use it. I like the green it just doesn't work where it is. I can always paint or use pastels over the it. It will be a challenge to see if it can be fixed.