Weekend Creativity Series – Batik
Batik is a technique used to put patterns and artwork on to cloth. The basic idea is to draw on fabric with something, usually hot wax, that will resist colored dye. The fabric can soak up color, your artwork remains, and the wax gets removed in a final step to leave the finished fabric and pattern.
Hot wax, colored dye, hot electric irons. Danger abounds! Hard as it is to believe, we did this in elementary school art class. It was one of my favorite projects.
We heated up paraffin until it melted, we painted on our pieces of fabric with the wax, then dipped it all in RIT dye. When it was dry, we’d heat up our irons, place the waxed fabric between sheets of newsprint, and would iron the wax out of the fabric. The newsprint acted as a sponge.







