Thursday, April 5, 2012

batik 101





Indonesia is well known for having beautiful batik textiles. Being the craft enthusiast that I am, I wanted to bring back more than just textiles from my trip. I wanted to be able to learn more about this technique and experience it for myself. With that being said, my mom and I decided to take a class on how to batik fabrics.



Batiking is a technique that uses a combination of wax and natural dyes to create a pattern on cotton or silk textiles. Since we only had one day to make our pieces, I decided to use bronze stamps instead of free-handing a pattern on my fabric. I started by stamping my end borders and some patterns in the middle.

  

Then, I painted the inside of the border and the patterns with different dyes starting with the darkest colors.



After all of the fabric had one layer of dye, it was time to stamp again using a different pattern. After that, I hand painted over some of the dye, and then painted a second layer of my main color.





After letting my piece dry in the sun, it was time to boil the fabric and then wash it in cold water to set the colors. I was so excited with how the piece turned out! Batiking is way more labor intensive than I thought, but so worth it when you see the finished product!

I'm not sure what to do with my piece yet. I'm thinking table runner? I'd love to hear your ideas!

xx K


1 comment:

  1. it's so beautiful! i just went to bali for the first time in december and i totally fell in love. your fabric would make a great table runner, or even a cute summery top x

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