Batik Experimentation

Last year I blogged about a Batik course I was taking with the Toronto District School Board. Initially I was excited to try this wax resist dying method out and the first classes were interesting because we dyed fabric and then made wax designs on them with various implements. It was very experimental. Each week for several weeks, though, that is all we did and I was getting tired of this and not receiving any further instruction. I was getting frustrated and so, as often happens when I feel I am not learning anything in a class, I just stopped going. It was also a difficult place to get to being downtown and having to travel at the evening rush hour through all kinds of construction just was not my cup of tea.

The down side of that decision is that I didn't know how to get the wax out of the fabric once I was done. I googled and experimented with different methods. I tried to iron the wax out between newspaper. The wax was absorbed onto the newspaper but also left a mark that looked like a grease stain on the fabric. So I was given some old aluminum pots which I used to try to boil the wax off the fabric. This proved to be labour-intensive as the wax didn't totally come out each time and I had to boil it several times. I used boiled water from my kettle and poured it over the fabric to get the residue off. My mistake was doing it in my kitchen sink and of course the drain clogged.

I did finally get the fabric to a point where I could just iron the small residue wax off. After that I washed the fabric in hot water and hung it to dry. Below are the results of this experiment and I've decided that I am not going to try this method again. Too much work and not the result I expected.

Done with wooden blocks

Wire BarBQ brush

Dripping and drawing with wax

Dripping wax

This was going to be a landscape with sky, water, trees.

Done with a metal cookie press and the head of a nail

Done with a metal butterfly stamp. This is the one I tried
to iron the wax out and all the butterflies look like grease
stains.

Drizzling and dripping wax

Not all my experiments work out the way I expect them to but I still intend to use these fabrics for something in the future.