Batik, C'est Chic
I've blogged about this book before, but it is coming up again, because I've got to say how much fun I have just keeping that electric fry pan of wax around and pulling it out on a random evening when I've got a free hour and a bell pepper.
Since I don't dye too often in the winter, I've got a fair amount of waxed fabric in a box under my bed, just waiting to be dyed.
When I made the light blue dye bath for my soccer jersey, I went through the box to see if any of the waiting fabric would be pleasing in blue.
I found this one, which was made using the aforementioned bell pepper:
Looks good all dyed up, no?
If you look back at my older posts about batik, you'll see that the problem I had when following the directions in Malka's book was some missing details in the explanation of removing the wax from the fabric. Basically, this is what I learned last time (which Malka confirmed in the comments to an earlier blog post): don't try to boil out more than a yard of fabric at a time.
I have discovered another useful tip which really minimizes the work involved in removing the wax: as the wax boils off the fabric, scoop it out of the pot.
Those bubbles on the surface are wax.
Scoop the wax.
Have a bucket of cold water handy and put the hot water and wax you've just scooped into the bucket.
As you can see, this removes a lot of the wax from the pot! It's kind of fun to watch it solidify as it hits the cold water. You don't have to watch the pot and scoop the wax continuously, a few times over the course of the boiling will do it.
Doing this made the post-pot wax removal time about 10-seconds long. I just had to rinse the fabric and massage it to verify that all the wax had been removed (it had!) Hooray!
Only drawback: my soup ladle is no longer safe for food...oh well, nothing a trip to the shops won't fix!
Since I don't dye too often in the winter, I've got a fair amount of waxed fabric in a box under my bed, just waiting to be dyed.
When I made the light blue dye bath for my soccer jersey, I went through the box to see if any of the waiting fabric would be pleasing in blue.
I found this one, which was made using the aforementioned bell pepper:
If you look back at my older posts about batik, you'll see that the problem I had when following the directions in Malka's book was some missing details in the explanation of removing the wax from the fabric. Basically, this is what I learned last time (which Malka confirmed in the comments to an earlier blog post): don't try to boil out more than a yard of fabric at a time.
I have discovered another useful tip which really minimizes the work involved in removing the wax: as the wax boils off the fabric, scoop it out of the pot.
Those bubbles on the surface are wax.
Scoop the wax.
Doing this made the post-pot wax removal time about 10-seconds long. I just had to rinse the fabric and massage it to verify that all the wax had been removed (it had!) Hooray!
Only drawback: my soup ladle is no longer safe for food...oh well, nothing a trip to the shops won't fix!
