Some Results of my Batik Class

In the Fall I had enrolled in a Batik class that the Toronto District School Board offered. It was being held at the Central Technical School on Bathurst Street.

I missed the first class because I was out of town but attended the next few. I was really enjoying them in the beginning and I did learn how the waxing of fabric is done, however, there wasn't very much in-class instruction so I was quite confused as to how many times to dye the work and didn't know exactly how to get the wax out of the fabric.

When the Christmas season came around I decided not to finish the course. I wasn't enjoying it anymore and it was a long drive to get to Central Tech.

I still had some unfinished fabric that I wanted to do something with. Some of it was dyed and waxed several times so I decided to try to get the wax out and see what I ended up with. I googled how to get wax out of batik fabric and it told me I could iron it out with newsprint between my iron and the fabric. I tried that and my fabric looked like it had an oily residue on it and I wasn't able to get that out.

So then I tried to boil it out. That worked better but it took three attempts at boiling before most of the wax was out. It still was the better method.

Below are some samples of my fabric.  I am pleased with them but I may experiment with other resists that are easier to get out.

This was only dyed once therefore it is very pale. Where the wax
was remains the original colour of the fabric.

This was dyed twice with the same colour. You can see some areas
are a darker shade and the wax left the original colour of the
fabric.

This one turned out better and was dyed with yellow first and
then blue.

This was dyed yellow before the wax was placed on it, then dyed blue
and then rose.

This one turned out the best with yellow first, then wax then red
and then spots of green.

I love the colour of this one but I should have used more wax.