Hermes2020
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After being out of action with an outbreak of shingles, I finally felt well enough to work on the large batik wall hanging I started a few weeks ago. Here are some steps in the process I followed.
The fabric I used was a 950 x 950mm square of 100% Egyptian high thread count cotton that is sold for sheeting. It is of really excellent quality and comes in 2800mm wide rolls. The cloth was soaked in near boiling water with laundry detergent added to remove any grease and sizing from the manufacturing process, then rinsed well and dried.
The design was drawn onto the fabric with pencil. I used soy wax for this batik, because I did not want excessive crackling. Soy wax is also very easy to remove from a finished batik by ironing between newspaper and washing in very hot water. Here is the first waxing step.
To minimize crackling I made a large (1000 x 1000mm) dyeing tray with a stopcock to drain the liquid after dyeing. The first dye was a strong blend of orange and red vat dyes. The waxed areas remained white.
The next dye bath was black, so I waxed the areas that had to remain red, while keeping the white areas waxed as well. After the black dye, I removed all the wax and waxed all the areas that had to be red and black. The exposed white areas were then dyed shades of green and turquoise.
Here is the finished 950 x 950mm batik:
Batiks work very well with backlighting and look almost like stained glass. Here is a contre-jour photo of part of the design to show the effect.
There was just the right amount of crackling to give the characteristic batik marbling effect, without disturbing the design too much. Of note is that the use of complementaries like green and red in the same batik requires some special tricks, which I think worked quite well in this piece.
If anyone here would like to try their hand at batik work, I would be happy to answer any technical questions.
The fabric I used was a 950 x 950mm square of 100% Egyptian high thread count cotton that is sold for sheeting. It is of really excellent quality and comes in 2800mm wide rolls. The cloth was soaked in near boiling water with laundry detergent added to remove any grease and sizing from the manufacturing process, then rinsed well and dried.
The design was drawn onto the fabric with pencil. I used soy wax for this batik, because I did not want excessive crackling. Soy wax is also very easy to remove from a finished batik by ironing between newspaper and washing in very hot water. Here is the first waxing step.
To minimize crackling I made a large (1000 x 1000mm) dyeing tray with a stopcock to drain the liquid after dyeing. The first dye was a strong blend of orange and red vat dyes. The waxed areas remained white.
The next dye bath was black, so I waxed the areas that had to remain red, while keeping the white areas waxed as well. After the black dye, I removed all the wax and waxed all the areas that had to be red and black. The exposed white areas were then dyed shades of green and turquoise.
Here is the finished 950 x 950mm batik:
Batiks work very well with backlighting and look almost like stained glass. Here is a contre-jour photo of part of the design to show the effect.
There was just the right amount of crackling to give the characteristic batik marbling effect, without disturbing the design too much. Of note is that the use of complementaries like green and red in the same batik requires some special tricks, which I think worked quite well in this piece.
If anyone here would like to try their hand at batik work, I would be happy to answer any technical questions.
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And…it looks like fun to do…
