Batty about Batiks

Tuesday I batiked fabric again. It was such fun before, I had to do more.

This time I started with previous hand-dyed fabric as my first layer. I started with smaller designs first using soy wax and a tjanting tool. Overdyed the fabric with a darker color and let dry in the sun. I did some of the fabrics with a second layer of soy wax and larger designs and overdyed the fabric with a second darker dye.

These were done with one layer of soy wax.

And these were done with several layers of soy wax and dyes.

I feel I had more success this time around with the batiking. I learned to start off waxing with smaller designs first and with each layer of wax making the designs larger, also starting off with lighter dye colors and progressing darker.

Summer is more than half over and sooo many more surface design techniques to try!!!

We're in the middle of a heat wave now so I'll go back in the air-conditioning and continue with a work in progress.

Painting Saturday

I mixed up some Seta Color paints Saturday to sun-print fabric. Last year I sun-printed some leaves on orange painted fabric but never used it. So now I mixed some orange, red-orange and red-violet and painted, then added some salt to give some texture. This will work well with last years fabric.


Next I used two blues, ultra-marine and cobalt. I painted it onto fabric and added salt.

Using moss green, blue-violet and purple, I streaked it on then added some leaves and sun-printed.

Another fabric I painted red and red-violet, put washers on the top and sun-printed.

Last I tried using a light green batik fabric, painted over with turquoise, laid down leaves and sun-printed.

I did the same thing with this piece but used a dark green paint.

I really like the look of the added salt. It gives a lot of texture to the fabric. The leaves that were sun-printed are just fun.

It was a productive day and a fun technique.