Batik is a wonderful process for decorating fabric. It is a technique in which wax is used to resist your choice of dye. I loved doing it in Ghana back in 2010 but had not tried it since. I did, however, have a bottle or two of Tulip Fashion Art Dye Resist in one of my many craft boxes so Jessica and I gave it a go and goodness me, we loved it! Before I go into details, let me show off the finished piece...
The wax resist acts very much like a glue in a squeezy bottle so it's great for little people to use without too much mess but Jessica found it difficult to squeeze it hard enough so she asked me to help. She was really specific about what design she wanted, I was just the instrument to make it happen! We then left the fabric and gloop to dry completely (we left it overnight) before commencing dyeing.
Now, this is the really exciting bit. To dye the fabric we used watered down acrylic paints and it worked brilliantly. No buckets of dye, no dyed hands and no fuss. We chose some really bright colours and just went for it. We covered the fabric completely and left it to dry for a couple of hours to allow the paints to penetrate the fabric.
After drying I scrubbed the fabric by hand in a bowl of hot water to wash off the wax resist. There was no noticeable leaking of colour into the water, which I was really pleased with although I wouldn't risk washing it in detergent. I was quite gentle with it as it was the first time we'd tried it and so there is some wax remaining but I will be a bit more confident with it next time to get the whole lot off.
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