A TECHNIQUE DRIVEN Blog dedicated to mastery of surface design techniques. First we dye, overdye, paint, stitch, resist, tie, fold, silk screen, stamp, thermofax, batik, bejewel, stretch, shrink, sprinkle, Smooch, fuse, slice, dice, AND then we set it on fire using a variety of heat tools.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Batiks for spring

I used some nested Wilton cookie cutters I found at Walmart for these flowers. After waxing the flower shapes, I painted with dye/soda solution, then removed the wax, and dyed the whole piece in a light periwinkle color to get rid of the stark white outlines. (Note: I just modified this posting to include a picture of the cookie cutters, which I forgot to add earlier).

And here's a potato masher batik piece that I painted with fuchsia & green, then removed the wax and overdyed in khaki to get rid of those stark white outlines.

9 comments:

  1. I love what you did with the cookie cutters! What a great idea.

    The process that you used for the flowers is very similar to the modified serti method (although he uses gutta, not wax) that British artist Leonard Thompson uses. His flowers are amazing...check out LeonardThompson.com.

    I'm thinking that I'm going to try using my kitska/tjanting to try some flowers. Yours are inspiring!

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  2. Hi, what fabric is it? cotton? What dyes did you use?

    you didn't find that overdyeing altered the pink? or what was the colour of the flowers and the centre of the potato masher prints before you overdyed to get rid of stark white?

    I am getting my head into the mode of trying this, so wanted to check on the overdye part of it.
    Thanks,
    Sandy in the UK

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  3. Kathy: I did do the flowers once before using the tjanting tool, it's on my blog at:
    http://periwinklequilts.blogspot.com/2010/09/batiked-flowers.html
    It was quite tedious in comparison to the cookie cutter method!
    Sandy: The fabric I used is cotton, and dye is procion mx. The overdyeing solution wasn't very strong that I used, as I just wanted to tone down the white. I think I used about 1/2 teaspoon of dye in about 1.5 cups of water.

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  4. Laura, I meant to ask you...was there a 'halo' left on the fabric after overdyeing where you ironed out the wax?

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  5. Love your flowers. I never thought of overdyeing the fabric after the piece was done to get rid of the white. I paint on silk and cotton with dyes, paint and inks. Besides not liking the white, I get a halo after I iron out the wax. I tried washing the pieces but that does not entirely take out the halo. Any suggestions would be more than welcome.

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  6. I'm not sure what you mean by a halo, Rosalita & Kathy. Sorry, I'd probably know what you were talking about if it did happen.

    I use beeswax, so I don't iron out the wax, I boil it in a pot of water for about 5 minutes, then hang it to dry, and all the wax just flakes off.

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  7. Another question, Laura: why did you choose a mix of beeswax and paraffin, and what's the ratio you use? I've been using soy wax, and it's been very user friendly, especially not having to boil the finished art. And with Setacolor, I have to iron anyway to set the paint, so having the wax come out on newspaper at the same time has been an added bonus. Not that I'm lazy or anything....

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  8. I got the book Color Your Cloth by Malka Dubrawsky in 2009 and her method was to use 1 lb of beeswax and 1 lb of paraffin. It was the first batik I ever tried to do, and I had never heard of soy wax at that point. Her directions were also what I used for my very first dyeing experiments. So that's what I started with, and the smell of the beeswax when you're applying it to the fabric and also when boiling it out of the fabric is heavenly!

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  9. I started batiking a few years back on cotton shirts. First I scrunch dye in bright yellow, orange and red, Then I trace leaf patterns on, paint over with soy wax, then overdye with browns. No white remains that way. It's always possible to start with a very pale color, then wax, then add more layers of color, add more wax, etc. BTW, I love your flowers! What a great idea!

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